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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 WeeklyAmazon.com Review
The soul of Questions for Ecclesiastes, winner of the 1998 Lenore MarshallPoetry Prize, lies in a sequence of poems whose title, "Unholy Sonnets,"immediately recalls the "Holy Sonnets" of John Donne. Instead of adoptingDonne's tone of vulnerable desperation, however, Jarman questions theconcept of divinity with a voice familiar to readers of contemporarypoetry: sincere, restrained, and polite, yet not unaware of the windingrhetoric of irony. Jarman adds a willingness to engage in abstract thoughtat the risk of losing emotional edge, an important risk that few poetstake. The "Unholy Sonnets" weave stories in the short, sharp narrativestyle of Edward Arlington Robinson, who provides a clear model for muchof Jarman's work--which is no insult to Jarman. The achievements ofRobinson, overshadowed in this century by more Continental-leaningmodernists, are being increasingly recognized and admired, thanks in partto Jarman's championing of "new formalism" in his anthology Rebel Angels. Jarmanechoes Robinson's "Eros Turranos" in the intense compression of syntax andstory in Jarman's seven-chambered poem "The Past from the Air," whichrelates the decades-long decay of a family in a variety of classical rhymeschemes:

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.

Customer Reviews (7)

I wanted to love this collection but ...
....I was disappointed.The "Unholy Sonnets" are excellent, quiet and low-keyed explorations of God and the human relationship to God.The poet rightly trusts his voice and skill.There are wonderful images that Jarman makes work well: " A useful God will roost in a bird-box, / Wedge-head thrust out, red-feathered in the sun."As a member of the new formalism school of poetry, Jarman succeeds in using form in a way that seems natural not forced.In an odd way, his skill with forms reminds me of Robert Frost.

Jarman is not limited by form - the title poem is a prose poem exploring the proper roles of parents and a stranger (preacher)sent to comfort them after their teenage daughter committed suicide.What would happen if the preacher "comforted" them with the theology of Ecclesiastes?Like the sonnets, this is an honest exploration of the tensions of faith in the modern world.

Unfortunately, while most of the remainder of the book shows the same skill, honesty and faith of these poems, the poems never "speak" to me - there is a formal distance in the writing that never pulls me into the world of the poetry nor resonates with my own world of humanity, poetry and faith. I was uninvolced even by beautiful poetry such as the fourth section of "The Past From the Air" which includes inspired lines: "And what God sees, if God sees anything, / Looks like the crawling colors on a bubble / ... / He sees a woman asking him to read / Her mind.He pities her.He cannot read."

Grrreat!
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.

Explorations of Faith
These are wonderful poems, which ask questions of God, questions about faith, questions about the workings of grace and what it means to be holy.Jarman manages to probe the paradoxes of faith in a deep but respectful way, without veering into either hostility, on the one hand, or an easy piety on the other."Tranfiguration" is a superb exploration of what it means for Christ -- for anyone -- to be subject to the law and to suffering, and how one can be transfigured by resistance to that fate."Questions for Ecclesiastes" is a devastating comment on how little consolation is provided by the Bible's "wisdom" in the face of real tragedy, in this case the suicide of a young girl."And God . . . who could have shared what he knew with people who needed urgently to hear it, God kept a secret."Jarman uses the English language beautifully, incorporating the rhythms and cadences of the King James even when not overtly using the language.These are poems to savor and come back to again and again.

Challenging us to think
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.

it's a nice little collection
this collection is a nice little collection of poems, but outside of the 20 unholy sonnets, nothing great. still, it's a nice collection from a contemporary poet. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Unholy and Holy
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.

Poems that can save lives
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.

Mostly Disappointing
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.

a new type of devotional poetry
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.

Poetry in celebration of prayer, gratitude, suffering & joy.
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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Sixteen essays by a founder and leading poet-critic of the New Narrative/New Formalist revival explore poetry and religion, the legacy of Stevens, Robinson, Frost, and Jeffers, and poetry by contemporaries such as Justice and Graham. ... Read more

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A thought-provoking book
I found Mark Jarman's book of essays, _The Secret of Poetry_, to be very rewarding, both in the actual experience of reading the book and in the essays' tendency to resonate in my mind since then.The book is one of those gems in which literary analysis becomes not only intellectually interesting and informative, but enjoyable as well.Jarman's ability to find new, relevant issues in the writing of prominent poets and his insightful exploration of his subject matter help to give this book the weight of genuine importance that so many books ultimately do not have.Fans of Jarman's poetry will recognize his characteristic wit in surprising (and often delightfully subtle) moments in this collection of prose.Although I had read poems by most of the writers to whom Jarman refers, there were also many times in which Jarman referenced either specific poems or poets I was not familiar with.I was pleasantly surprised that I still felt engaged when reading essays that dealt with works unfamiliar to me.Jarman must have a talent for precisely contextualizing poems and poets, because I was not left feeling lost; in fact, I have found that the essays made certain writings seem so intriguing that I have felt compelled to read several of them since then.For me, the most unique aspect of _The Secret of Poetry_ is how it offers so many potential secrets of poetry.This aspect makes it feel like Jarman is inviting the reader along on a search rather than simply stating his own conclusions.Although Jarman frankly gives his own opinions about what the secret of poetry may be, there is also a definite sense that he wants his readers to consider the question on their own. ... Read more

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the best of meditative poetry
Mark Jarman's new book Epistles, is the one he was meant to write. A short review can't really express how playful, tender and insightful these poems are, how attentive to the very real, body- and- soul -destructive conditions of the world, and at the same time teasingly, generously aware of how deep our longings are for meaning, oversight,and connectedness.These Epistles are often subversive: "God spoke your name today; He said, "Tell me of my Servant X." We all lied.". I think it's the acheivement of tone that makes these poems so moving and impressive-- they aren't omniscient in the elevated way of Rilke-- they are utterly conversational- but they are so pervasive and insightful in their variety and thoughtfulnes, the probing empathy of their explorations,that I'm moved and made credulous over and over again of the integrity of their message. Another contemporary book with which this might be compared is Wild Iris, by louise Gluck, a great book. Nonethelesss, Jarman's book may be even better for its kindness, though it is no less ruthless and insightful about the human condition, and the orphaned crucible of being alive and conscious-- not conscious enough to be happy with the fruit of awareness, not unconscious enough to be content with our merely physical lives.Jarman has been a very good poet for a long time- but this book is a stellarand valuable acheivement. It deserves to win the Pulitzer or NBA, or some large recognition-- because this book offers unstintingly and unsentimentally, good news about -if nothing else- the resourcefullness of human soul and imagination. These poems are also, in their way, very funny.

Kissing the Leper
A Catholic who claimed that St. Francis is perhaps the most beloved of saints would meet few arguments, even from non-Catholics. His popularity might be gauged by the number of gardens in which his statue appears, usually feeding birds or holding out his delicate hand to deer and rabbits. Many garden owners aren't especially religious, but they're attracted to St. Francis anyway. And why not? In humility and compassion, he almost transcends those pious partygoers, his fellow saints.

But even the divine Francis faced a late test that plagued his life of service and devotion. He feared lepers. He found them repulsive, disgusting, horrific. Seeing one on the road or in the village, he'd literally turn and run away like a hysterical child. This uncontrollable fear almost led to Francis renouncing his vows and leaving the monastery. How could he do God's work when he couldn't even do the work of a simple, compassionate man?
Francis's spiritual struggle was terrific. We know he succeeded (we need only check a few gardens to be assured of that), but how? Walking down a lane one day, Francis met up with his worst nightmare. A horribly disfigured leper burst out of the hedge and onto the road directly in Francis's path. The men stopped, facing each other. A moment later, Francis threw his arms around the leper and kissed him on the mouth. A signature moment, a St. Francis moment.

This is a beautiful, inspiring resolution, but we can only wonder about Francis's years of struggle before he spiritually broke through.

Mark Jarman's new book of poetry consists of 30 letters to God, to believers and non-believers, to familiars, and to himself that give us the marvelous experience of living and working through just such a struggle. EPISTLES is Jarman's honest, insightful, painful, and uplifting account of meeting and embracing his leper.
READER ALERT! These are not one-trick-pony poems. These are dense, provocative, edgy, yet relentlessly reasonable reflections on the meaning of faith in our scary America and only slightly less frightening world. I delight in reading these poems aloud, the better to catch their stick-in-your-heart cadences, their often surprising yet clear as spring water imagery, and their uncompromising truths. Reading aloud also unveils the subtleties of Jarman's often exquisite thought.

A believer who has long suffered dramatic doubt, Jarman addresses God and us with a familiarity that undercuts reverence without destroying it. He questions, questions, and then questions some more. At times I can imagine him in God's eyes, who regards the poet as that charming A-student who is at times annoying because he always has a question, then one more after that.

In spiritual practice, the goal is integration, making the practice seamless with all that we do in our daily lives. Jarman succeeds, and the proof is in every page. Whether he is jogging, watching birds, contemplating trees and flowers, lying in bed beside his wife, remembering, debating religious fine points, teaching, or probing the language of science, Jarman is faithful to spiritual questing as The Point of his time here on earth.
As a result, he has given us the gift of his most mature, best book. Again, read one or two of these epistles aloud each day. I find that they work nicely in my own daily practice of prayers, poems, and mantras. What better recommendation for a book of poetry than that?

--Robert McDowell, The Poetry Mentor, www.robertmcdowell.net, author of the forthcoming Poetry as Spiritual Practice (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, July 2008) ... Read more

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A Passionate New Collection
Mark Jarman's new collection picks up where "Unholy Sonnets" left off in exploring and questioning the Christian faith, simultaneously rejecting dogmatic doctrine and upholding orthodoxy."To the Green Man" takes art (specifically paintings) as its overall subject, including poems that explore not only how painting interpret scripture, but also how certain paintings retell biblical stories.The book also includes some narrative excursions, as well, including a wonderful piece about the poet's grandfather, Ray.

Buy this today and keep a look out for Jarman's new collection of prose poems.

Swimming up to the surface...
I agree with your first reviewer. Three years ago I lost my aunt and uncle on a pleasure cruise. We were extremely close, and I plunged into a terrible grieving cycle. A friend gave me a copy of Mark Jarman's Questions for Ecclesiastes and a copy of his Unholy Sonnets. Those poems, more than anything else in my life, repaired my life. If it's possible, this new book is even wiser, gentler, better--if that's possible.

Jarman should win the Pulitzer Prize
Mark Jarman's new book is a brilliant continuation of the themes for which he is so admired. Is there a poet writing today with a more keenly developed, complex spirituality? These are poems our culture needs, perhaps now more than ever. They are so readable, so thought provoking, so memorable. Treat yourself and your friends to this volume. ... Read more

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Winner of the 17th annual Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, Fall Sanctuary was selected from more than 800 entries by final judge Mark Jarman who describes Hardin's world as "primarily the rural South, and his people primarily country people with their deep and rooted knowledge . . . Out of his world and its speech, he makes lyric poetry of praise for the earth."

Jeff Hardin lives and teaches in Columbia, Tennessee.

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Bring Back The Reaper!
How refreshing it was to encounter The Reaper Essays. The Reaper was a literary journal which ceased publication in 1989 after 18 issues. The Editors, Mark Jarman & Robert McDowell, believed that by then they had achieved their stated aim of creating the circumstances in which a new narrative poetry might flourish. The Reaper was their editorial persona named as responsible for many of the excellent essays contained in this book. (Other chapters, no less excellent, include a fictitious correspondence between Dante and Homer, and a laugh out loud hilarious spoof of an interview with a contemporary poet couple.)

On the positive side, I feel as though I have finally been given permission to write narrative poetry. Selections such as "The Reaper's Non-Negotiable Demands," which includes a call for no more poems about poetry, and "How to Write Narrative Poetry" which gives ten admirable rules to follow, not only encourage me to believe in the art form but also prompt me to reconsider my own oeuvre, past and present. On the negative side, I think Mark & Robert downed the scythe too early. In "Thanatopsis Revisited" that po-biz icon American Poetry Review comes under their microscope and is accused of publishing too few narrative poems. Now I happen to have the most recent issue of APR and found that 17 years later we have about the same proportion of narrative: lyric.

My other evidence for this lack of progress goes back to the spoof interview "The Reaper Interviews Jean Doh & Sean Dough." I doubt I would have found this chapter so hilarious if it wasn't, alas, still so true.

great collection of essays
Jarman and McDowell came along with their magazine, The Reaper, when it was needed most. They've done a lot to bring back narrative poetry (McDowell is the founder of Story Line Press). They wrote these essays together, and weren't afraid to say what they thought--they weren't afraid to make anyone mad (they remind me of Randall Jarrell in that way). Meg Schoerke's introduction and the first Reaper essay introduce those of us who are unfamiliar with The Reaper. "Navigating the Flood" takes on criticism, and they aren't afraid to name names. Their essay on Wallace Stevens discusses his impact on contemporary poetry and the narrative. Two essays, "The Reaper's Non-negotionable Demands" and "The Elephant Man of Poetry" (which is about Robert Frost) are the two best essays in the book, and two of the best essays about poetry. They attack the state of poetry with satire and humor in "The Reaper Interviews Jean Doh and Sean Dough" and "The Dogtown Letters", and both essays will make you laugh out loud. The sad thing is that it just as easily could have been real. In addition to four other essays, there is also a guide to writing narrative poetry. This collection is so great that you wish that The Reaper was still in circulation, and you hope that one day Jarman and McDowell will collect a "Best of" and release it soon. ... Read more

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Mark Jarman, author of the narrative poem Iris and the lyric sequence Unholy Sonnets, is a poet associated with the revival of narrative and traditional form in contemporary American poetry. In Body and Soul he considers poetry from the Renaissance to the present in essays that touch on the importance of religion, place, and personal experience to poetry and reflect Jarman's particular interests. His focus is on the relationship between lyric and narrative, song and story, in poems of all kinds. He considers the poem as a record of both body and soul, and examines his own life, in an extended autobiographical essay, as a source for the stories he has told in his poetry.
The essays "Where Poems Take Place" and "A Shared Humanity" consider the relation between setting or situation and representation. The psychological roots of narrative are considered in "The Primal Storyteller." But the main interest of these essays is how and why narrative is used as a form. The influence of Robinson Jeffers's style of narrative is argued in "Slip, Shift, and Speed Up: The Influence of Robinson Jeffers's Narrative Syntax." In "The Trace of a Story Line" an argument is made that the poets Philip Levine and Charles Wright employ narration or storytelling in their poetry as a mode of meaning. Other essays consider Donald Davie, Philip Larkin, Herbert Lomas, Louis Simpson, Lyn Hejinian, Tess Gallagher, and Ellen Bryant Voigt.
Mark Jarman's poetry has appeared in many publications, including the American Poetry Review and the New Yorker. He has won the Lenore Marshall/Nation Prize of the Academy of American Poets, a Guggenheim fellowship, and multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is Professor of English, Vanderbilt University.
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Customer Reviews (2)

what a narrative should be
In his Reaper Essays Jarman espouses the positive characteristics of the narrative poem, and then in his book-length narrative poem, _Iris_, he puts in practice what he puts forth in theory. He uses long lines--ten feet of iambic pentameter. The story is of a young mother, Iris, and her search for family and for the meaning in the poetry of Robinson Jeffers. Section one is as good as you are going to find in narrative poetry. I will admit that section two is rather weak. But he rises again in section three, wich is rather good, it doesn't rise up to what you find in section one, but then what could, but still, it is quite good. I highly recommend this book as an example of what narrative poetry should be.

valuable addition to narrative verse
Though not a fan of New Formalism or any of its subsequent branches, including the New Narrative, I have found Jarman's book-length poem Iris to be captivating and impressive.The book is ultimately a tribute toRobinson Jeffers, but Jarman succeeds in establishing his own narrativestyle that incorporates deft lyricism and acute observation. ... Read more

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Bold narrative poems that recreate the past. ... Read more

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Debut novel from the author of 19 Knives and New Orleans is Sinking. Salvage King, Ya! is a gritty, down-to-earth story of a hockey player’s last few years in the minors. Drinkwater, an almost-got-to-the-NHL tough-mouthed romantic is skidding through the tail end of his 30s on a high-octane journey of self-actualization. Chip-toothed and soaring he struggles to come to terms with the conflicting aspirations of his youth and the reality of inheriting the family junkyard. Roving. Luminous. Rowdy. Funny.

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Defies description
D-man juggles ex wife, future wife, waitress girlfriend, plane crash, drink-fests, the whole damn kitchen sink.A wild ride.One of those books they say is 'not for everyone', but oh yeah, it's for everyone.Probably helps your perspective if you've played some hockey, but not strictly necessary.Exhausting, crazy - well worth your time.And damn funny, to boot.

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On August 28, 1922, the martyred Irish patriot Michael Collins was buried. Businesses across Dublin closed as thousands came out to pay their respects. On the same day, Michael Lyons, a cooper from the Guinness factory, drowned in Dublin's Royal Canal. This peculiar confluence is Mark Anthony Jarman's starting point for a meditation on the intertwined history of a nation and his family. Jarman's pursuit of the circumstances of his grandfather's drowning leads him through a modern Ireland that teems with ghosts from the past. Thwarted by family gossip, aunts who can't drive a stick shift, cousins more interested in pubs than lore, and his own fascination with the many Irelands that have been, Jarman finds what he's seeking despite, or perhaps because of, the antics and the unreliable histories. What he reconfigures is a revelation, and an enchanting and engrossing read. ... Read more

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Creative non-fiction about one man's changing "motherland"
A brisk overview of a changing Ireland from a perspective of a Canadian son of an English father and Irish mother. Under the guise of finding out how his grandfather died in a Dublin canal the same August day that Michael Collins was buried, Jarman combines a search for the juxtaposition with his own meditation on how strong and how weak family ties can bind sons of emigrants. Jarman combines "creative nonfiction" perhaps less sucessfully here as he intersperses dramatizations of his own experiences in the North into his relatively more linear recollections of encounters with his relatives and others he meets in both Dublin and Killarney--the latter's particularly well-evoked in his description of his old family house now ruined. Jarman contrasts his two uncles, gay Padraig and policeman Sharkey, effectively, and sees how disorienting relations can be when one is put back in the "motherland" only to find that he feels estranged as often as welcomed by distant cousins and the like.

He contemplates how, if one's parents have chosen as his did to emigrate in the post-WWII period, those like himself can never be accepted upon their return, having been by the Irish "written out of their will," and therefore disinherited. Although sections on climbing the "Reek," Croagh Patrick, and venturing into the North on a previous trip in 1981 perhaps, his summing up of an Ireland suddenly cash-rich and spending it all makes for sobering and thoughtful reading. I especially liked his interspersed, often deadpan, jingles, snippets of punk and new-wave and Beatles lyrics, and asides to Shakespeare and high culture and low all blended into his own unpredictable prose style, deceptively simple and casual but belying careful construction and arrangement of incident. Not perfect, but a cut above the usual misty-eyed or morally stern travelogue. ... Read more

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Mark Anthony Jarman is one of Canada’s most original and compelling writers of short fiction."My White Planet" is his latest collection of fourteen new stories, many of which have previously won or been short-listed for literary magazine awards.Jarman’s use of language and metaphor is unique in the Canadian literary pantheon.With extraordinary linguistic energy, he pushes the boundaries of fiction and story-telling.Every sentence reverberates with subtle meaning and every reading of a Jarman story brings out ever deeper layers of complexity and nuance.Here is a protean writer who bends form and enters into worlds and people with panache and a verve that is breath-taking.The range of his fiction is stunning:troops undertake a nightmarish march following Custer’s last stand; a father’s dogs tear apart his son and he is accused of cowardice and neglect; seven marooned men at a remote polar station save the life of a naked young woman; domestic squabbles and infidelity abound amidst west coast chainsaws and floatplanes; a dropout skateboarder falls off a railway bridge and drowns in the river; a city bus ride ends up crossing the entire country; a time traveler witnesses Louis Riel’s botched execution of Thomas Scott; a young woman removes her bra from under her shirt and her male friend is paralysed by possible meanings; an outsider plays old timer hockey in the wilds of New Brunswick; Victorian fashion is mixed up with the violent deaths of Custer, Louis Riel and Sitting Bull; a flight attendant is able to read passengers’ minds.A master of literary conceit and a hewer of breakneck language, Mark Anthony Jarman defies categorization and offers us instead a narrative freshness that surprises and offers up a world of wonders. ... Read more

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A book to be proud of!
Far and Away was a breathtaking novel that told the story of a young girl, whom travels to America from Ireland in pursuit of land. The book takes place during the time farmer tenants, in Ireland, were revolting againstthe Irish lanlords.Shanon and Joseph find themselves batteling oppertunityand poverty and in the end they meet again during the Oklahoma land rush,in pursuit of land.

A book to be proud of!
Far and Away was a breathtaking novel that told the story of a young girl, whom travels to America from Ireland in pursuit of land. The book takes place during the time farmer tenants, in Ireland, were revolting againstthe Irish lanlords.Shanon and Joseph find themselves batteling oppertunityand poverty and in the end they meet again during the Oklahoma land rush,in pursuit of land. ... Read more