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Unholy Sonnets

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Mark Jarman's poetry collected in Unholy Sonnets explores the
relationship between what the soul desires and what creation allows,
the nature of prayer, incarnation, judgement, and grace, trying to
imagine a God that cares about individual yearning, gratitude,
suffering, and joy. Kenosis: An absence turned to presence is
confusing./Take Mary, who took for a gardener/One that she knew was
dead and in his grave,/One that she then called Master, when he
stood/Before and said, "Mary," and resisted/Her startled,
tender, human wish to touch./We want to fill the emptiness with
meaning./I had a friend whose father died in his armchair./And when my
friend came home, there was a drape/With the body slumped beneath it,
still in the chair./She said, "I knew that must be him. And
yet,/It was a shock to see him sitting there,/So present and not
present, this big man,/Filling his place as much or more than ever.
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Jarman's Unholy Sonnets is a sequence of sonnets written to follow his previous collection, Questions for Ecclesiastes. Almost every type of sonnet is found in this collection. The sonnets are a form of devotional poetry, unlike what has been written before, such as Donne's sonnets, which is why Jarman wrote Questions for Ecclesiastes and Unholy Sonnets, as a response to Donne. Jarman's sonnets are a different type of devotional poetry. He doesn't just worship God, but asks questions about the nature of God and spirituality, thus the title unholy. One of the things Jarman does in these sonnets is to question God with lines like "Soften the blow, imagined God, and give/Me one good reason for this punishment" from sonnet 3. And sonnet 6 where he questions his relationship with God. And Jarman's poetry continues on this way throughout the entire sequence, fifty sonnets dealing with prayer, judgement, religion, and even science versus religion. Most of the sonnets in the sequence are pretty good, though a few, like sonnet 1, 3, and the prologue sonnet stand out as excellent poems, and there are a few that are truly horrible like 27 and 35 which are unclear and the rhymes are either sound forced or just aren't very good. But the well crafted sonnets outweigh the poorer sonnets.

Paradoxically, "Unholy Sonnets" are at once Christian-based relgious poems that challenge conventional christianity. A gifted poet, Jarman balances the hum-drum and the monotony of every-day life against the transcendence of Christianity. These poems present the paradoxes of Christianity also, the least of which being how one can both worship Jesus Christ and cast him in human form.

The sonnet form is perfectly suited for this investigation, as it, like conventional Christianity, is bound by rules and conventions. Jarman, however, moves fluidly in the framework of the sonnet form, railing against at times and settling into it comfortable at other times.

"Unholy Sonnets" bypasses "Questions for Ecclesiastes" by leaps and bounds. Those who miss the beauty of these poems simply don't know how to read poetry. There are no forced rhymes here. There are no forced themes here. These poems break with the standard workshop-model tripe that pollutes today's literary magazines. Mark Jarman may very well be this century's answer to George Herbert or John Donne.

Spiritually powerful poems that are so timely and unforgettable! Mark Jarman us a lyric genius and a great storyteller. His meditations reflect and enrich my own struggles with the meaning of God and life. This and his previous, award-winning collection, QUESTIONS FOR ECCLESIASTES, contain some of the most important poetry written in our lifetime. A must read, over and over again.

I loved Jarman's previous book, "Questions for Ecclesiastes," so I was looking forward to this one. Although many people seem to be wildly impressed by the fact that Jarman is writing sonnets, it seemed to me that the form often detracted from the work, rather than adding to it. Forced rhymes and stilted rhythms ruined more than one of these sonnets for me, and the relatively abbreviated form often seemed to cut short complex thoughts and ideas before Jarman had any real chance to explore them. The poems that work best for me are the longer ones, usually composed of multiple stanzas in sonnet form. Here, given enough space to let his thoughts breathe, Jarman not only has more to say, he also handles the form itself much more fluidly and flexibly. "The Word 'Answer'" and "The World" are the long poems at the beginning and end of the book, and both are superb reflections on one's relationship to God and to grace. The final sestet of "The Word 'Answer'" shows what Jarman is capable of when he doesn't get too caught up in the form:

God, I am thinking of you now as snow,
Descending like the answer to a prayer,
This prayer that you will be made visible,
Drifting and deepening, a dazzling, slow
Acknowledgment, out of the freezing air,
As dangerous as it is beautiful.

The rhymes are there, but they don't get in the way of the imagery, and the image here picks up on the previous imagery and language and thoughts of this poem. What's good in this book is enough to make it worthwhile, but don't expect every page to take your breath away.