Questions for Ecclesiastes [Paperback]

Mark Jarman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1997

Winner--1998 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize

Finalist--1997 National Book Critics Circle Award
"In Questions for Ecclesiastes, Mark Jarman takes on the idea of holiness in an unholy world, of spiritual realities in secular America... His poems made me think of altars, the kind we sometimes make unconsciously on a side-table or dresser where we deposit sea shells, pebbles, lost buttons, and other interesting finds, arranging them just so, as if to make an offering to an unknown god."-Charles Simic, Judge, The Academy of American Poets

"A devout and learned exploration of the absence and silence of God."-The Philadelphia Inquirer

"In this deeply impressive collection, Jarman is concerned with God, His grace, and humans' relations with Him... In 20 'Unholy Sonnets,' he takes up matters of theology directly and so appositely for these times that some of them may become pulpit as well as anthology staples."-Ray Olson, Booklist

"[An] A+ level candidate for glory, so peculiar in the excellence and pleasure it offers as to baffle anyone in the business of awarding laurels."-The Hudson Review

"Inverting Donne's 'Holy Sonnets' in his ironic 20-poem 'Unholy Sonnets' sequence, Jarman's tone is discursive instead of devotional, comic instead of firm. The sonnets...explore faith with a sense of inevitability. Yet they are less about God than about our relationship to God and our inability to understand God's judgement."-The Boston Book Review

"Memorable for its section 'Unholy Sonnets'...Questions for Ecclesiastes ultimately captures a poet's challenge to God: Are you there, or aren't you?"-Seattle Weekly

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The soul of Questions for Ecclesiastes, winner of the 1998 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, lies in a sequence of poems whose title, "Unholy Sonnets," immediately recalls the "Holy Sonnets" of John Donne. Instead of adopting Donne's tone of vulnerable desperation, however, Jarman questions the concept of divinity with a voice familiar to readers of contemporary poetry: sincere, restrained, and polite, yet not unaware of the winding rhetoric of irony. Jarman adds a willingness to engage in abstract thought at the risk of losing emotional edge, an important risk that few poets take. The "Unholy Sonnets" weave stories in the short, sharp narrative style of Edward Arlington Robinson, who provides a clear model for much of Jarman's work--which is no insult to Jarman. The achievements of Robinson, overshadowed in this century by more Continental-leaning modernists, are being increasingly recognized and admired, thanks in part to Jarman's championing of "new formalism" in his anthology Rebel Angels. Jarman echoes Robinson's "Eros Turranos" in the intense compression of syntax and story in Jarman's seven-chambered poem "The Past from the Air," which relates the decades-long decay of a family in a variety of classical rhyme schemes:

She has no reason to remember this
Declining beachtown where she was not young
With any sort of love or happiness
Or now, to see it renovated, sprung
To a new level of well-being, grow
Nostalgic as her son does. Home
Is nothing to be sick for, when you know
It is an idea sculpted out of foam.

This poem showcases the pleasures of Mark Jarman's clear lines and metaphors, his workmanlike meter, his calm reasonings, the slow unfolding of a longish poem. These are old-fashioned pleasures; he is not an old-fashioned poet, but one who has considered at length Ecclesiastes's saw about there being nothing new under the sun. The title poem tells the story, in questions, of the narrator's minister father visiting a teenage suicide's family. The questioning acts like a centrifuge that spins a disturbing gravity around the central story, building to one paraphrase of the book's central query: "And what if one with only a casual connection to the tragedy remembers a man, younger than I am today, going out after dinner and returning, then sitting in the living room, drinking a cup of tea, slowly finding the strength to say he had visited these grieving strangers and spent some time with them?" Poetry is, for Jarman, more an act of questioning than an act of answering, though there is room for a few speculative answers. In the parable of "Unholy Sonnet 12," a farmer more pious than Job cries, "Why?" to God when a flood sweeps his farm away: "And God grumped from his rain cloud, 'I can't say. / Just something about you pisses me off.'" With Questions for Ecclesiastes, Jarman joins the small congregation of poets, with George Herbert at the pulpit, who perceive a relationship between poetic form and the spiritual form of being. --Edward Skoog

From Publishers Weekly

In his latest collection, Jarman (The Black Riviera, 1990) reveals scenes from his life as a teenage surfer in California and as a husband and father: "To lie in your child's bed when she is gone/ Is as calming as anything I know. To fall/ Asleep, her books arranged above your head." Other, less ruminative works grapple with the possibility of God and the condition of humanity. The narrative "Transfiguration" conflates the words of Christ with the advice of a modern-day physician: "And he said, 'All things are possible to those who believe. Shave her head,/ Insert a silicone tube inside her skull, and run it under her scalp.'" The irony in such poems is inescapable; not so clear are the points this irony is intended to serve. In the title poem, phrases from Ecclesiastes blend with an account of a contemporary teenage suicide. It ends: "And God,/ who could have shared what he knew with people who needed/ urgently to hear it, God kept a secret." The sequence "Unholy Sonnets" expands this protest, variously addressing God as "Gracious Lord," "First Letter of the Alphabet, Last Word,/ Mutual Satisfaction, Cash Award," and "O Big Idea." A man afflicted with trials like Job's asks why: "And God grumped from his rain cloud, 'I can't say./ Just something about you pisses me off.'" Jarman posits-and challenges-a God remote from human experience in these poems, which, despite their rhymes and structures, ring a too discursive note and offer little sense of movement. (Jan.) FYI: Jarman co-edited Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism (1996).
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 104 pages
• Publisher: Story Line Press (March 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1885266413
• ISBN-13: 978-1885266415
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,623,140 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Profound Masterpiece, January 16, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Questions for Ecclesiastes (Paperback)

Mark Jarmon, firmly established poet and essayist, does not merely cement his reputation as a fine author with "Questions...," rather, he continues to build and press into deeper emotional territory. His poems, though at times profoundly sad, jarring or seemingly iconoclastic, express a strange and strikingly real sense of hope and calmness. Though a collection of poems dealing mainly with religion and God could easily become tiresome, Jarmon materfully crafts fascinating and deeply emotional poetry, his settings are reified, and the reader manages to gain the uncommon feeling of wholeness and triumph which accompanies the reading of great and momentous works of literature. This collection of poetry is no less than essential reading for anyone with even a passing interest in the art of verse.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Challenging us to think, November 11, 2000

By 

Wayne Symes (Doha, Qatar) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Questions for Ecclesiastes (Paperback)

Of the books of poems that I own, this is my favourite. Jarman's writing is clear, powerful and spiritual. He is not afraid to ask questions (nor to attempt to provide an answer and admit that it is inadequate). My own occupation makes the title poem (dealing with the suicide of a 14 year old girl and our response to it) particularly poignant. If you think about relationships, including a relationship with God, these poems are well worth reading.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Grrreat!, April 29, 2002

By 

Brandy Clark (Republic, MO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Questions for Ecclesiastes (Paperback)

I am a huge fan of Mark Jarman's work; and this book is incredible. I like the new and fresh ideas on how he sees God. He came to read at SMSU, and when he read the poem "Ground Swell" it was thrilling, b/c it's my favorite poem. Go get this book if you want a good read.