Spiritual lord of the spring and fertility in wintry Western Europe, the Green Man is precisely the kind of presence Jarman, a poet much concerned with divinity in the world, could be expected to hail. And he does, of course, asking further that the Green Man pray for us. To whom, though? Why, to the living God that Jarman, son and grandson of ministers, seeks and finds, despite the fact, as he says in "Canzone," a tribute to a Renaissance painting of paradise, that he can only "wish I could believe in [the] promise of paradise / As deeply as I believe in this mortal body"--given which, "Let us think of God as a lover / Who never calls," Jarman says in "Five Psalms," and learn to forgive. The interplay between doubt and faith continues throughout this collection, and in the struggle of that interplay, faith ultimately seems to win. Jarman may be the best religious poet in America today, as capable as were his preacher forebears of restoring one's soul.
Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
About the Author
Mark Jarman is a professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. He is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently To the Green Man, published by Sarabande. His book The Black Riviera won the 1991 Poets' Prize. Questions for Ecclesiastes was a finalist for the 1997 National Book Critics Circle Award and won the 1998 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.
