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"These sensitive and meditative poems offer up new ways to consider the passage of time."—Publishers Weekly
"A moving collection that acknowledges the limitations of the human mind, but also the limitless capacity of the human heart."—Chapter 16
The poems in Mark Jarman’s new collection, Zeno’s Eternity, take their cue from Zeno’s paradox, which says that since space is infinitely divisible, an arrow traveling toward a target will never reach its destination. Everything exists in a kind of suspension.
From “The Arrow Paradox”:
Zeno sent
his arrow flying
endlessly from point
to point along its arc
to make a point
about eternity:
getting there is tricky.
Though our lives run on, we may feel that certain moments are timeless, and love that moves us toward each other can give us a sense of eternity. Portraying moments from ordinary life and from times long past, moments both pivotal and mundane, Jarman encourages the reader to feel the beat of time and its inexplicable stillness. By making scenes indelible, the poet stops time; and we might ask ourselves, is this not only Zeno’s eternity, but ours, too?
"A moving collection that acknowledges the limitations of the human mind, but also the limitless capacity of the human heart."—Chapter 16
PRAISE FOR MARK JARMAN'S OTHER BOOKS:
"Gratifying . . . On page after page, Jarman takes quotidian diurnal light and transforms it into solar energy."―Los Angeles Review of Books on Dailiness
"His specific ability to help the reader understand why a poem or even a particular word works is extraordinary."―ZYZZYVA on Dailiness
"With precision and tenderness, Jarman explores the sinew and soul of humankind."—Publishers Weekly on The Heronry
"In Mark Jarman's considerable new collection...[the poems] very often trace similar paths of thought and experience toward freedom, light, truth, and love."—Booklist on The Heronry
"While most of the poems explore faith in its many manifestations, there is something here transcendent that speaks to everyone. Highly recommended."—Library Journal on Epistles
"Mark Jarman is . . . one of the most thoughtful and adroit poets writing these days, a man with handsome ambitions."—The Georgia Review on The Black Riviera
Mark Jarman is the author of eleven books of poetry. The Heronry is his most recent. He has also published three books of essays and reviews, won awards for his poetry, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is Centennial Professor of English, Emeritus, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.
Table of Contents
1
Memory Song
Providence
With Marcus Aurelius in Los Angeles
The Conversion of the Vikings
The Dancing Satyr
A Swan from Prague
Almost
2
The Arrow Paradox
Cause Me to Hear
Come Away, Come Away
This Is the Day the Lord Has Made
Our Life
Galaxy
Growing Rain
Seam
Seminar on “The Purloined Letter”
Hillwood
She Twirled Along the Brick Wall
Sick Fox
Brink
Now That the Father’s Gone
One of Us, Waiting
End of the Day.
Knifing Wind.
No One Understood the Final Meal
Blackout Good Friday Night
Our Inconstant Moon
3
Altarpiece, Three for Dante
This
Place
The
Other Place
That
Place
4
Near Cape Lookout
Yahrzeit
The Children’s Zoo
In the First Minute Without Him
My Father Returns as a Luna Moth
End of Summer
5
Overpass Ivy
Acknowledgements