Poetry isn’t popular.  I am just going to have to face it.  So I double dog dare you to read this.  Come on click on “read more” below and view the whole page.  Come on do it. I promise it won’t hurt.

I have been told to try to meet Mark Jarman by a number of people for some time.  He is the Centennial Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. Today I made an interesting connection.  I have been familiar with his poetry for years but it wasn’t until today when I came across his poetry in Image Journal, That I realized that this poet that I enjoy and the person that I have been told to try to meet are one in the same.  So decided I would google him, found his phone number, called him, he answered and we are going to have lunch soon.

Here is a sample of his work:

Reminder

By Mark Jarman

    For God is in Heaven, and you upon earth.

                                — Ecclesiastes 5:2

Don’t take your eyes of the road.

Accept nothing as given.

Watch where you put your hands.

You are here and God is in Heaven.

Be careful where you step.

The drop-off’s somewhere near.

The fog won’t lift tonight.

God is in heaven. You’re here.

The word you wish to say,

That score you’d like to even —

Don’t hurry either while

You’re here and God’s in heaven

The earth says, “Take the wheel.

But no matter how you steer,

I’ll still go round in circles.

God’s in Heaven. You’re here.”

Unholy Sonnet 11

By Mark Jarman

Half asleep in prayer I said the right thing

And felt a sudden pleasure come into

The room or my own body. In the dark,

Charged with a change of atmosphere, at first

I couldn’t tell my body from the room.

And I was wide awake, full of this feeling,

Alert as though I’d heard a doorknob twist,

A drawer pulled, and instead of terror knew

The intrusion of an overwhelming joy.

I had said thanks and this was the response.

But how I said it or what I said it for

I still cannot recall and I have tried

All sorts of ways all hours of the night.

Once was enough to be dissatisfied.

Here is an excerpt from his bio from the Poetry Foundation website:

While teaching at Murray State University during the early 1980s, Jarman began to despair about the state of narrative poetry. He commiserated about the trend with his friend Robert McDowell, then a teacher at Indiana State University. As a result of their mission to restore the narrative form and a sense of formality to their craft, the two founded the Reaper, a magazine focusing on poems that "tell stories which their imagery serves," according to its manifesto. Jarman and McDowell warned that "Navel gazers and mannerists, their time is running out. Their poems, too long even when they are short, full of embarrassing lines that 'context' is supposed to justify, confirm the suspicion that our poets just aren't listening to their language anymore." Although the Reaper ceased publication in 1989, a publishing company Jarman and McDowell founded, Story Line Press, remains as a means of publishing the works of like-minded poets.

For more of his poetry and a continuation of this bio click HERE

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