"At a time when much poetry is growing ever narrower and more self-referential, Mark Jarman is a poet who still dares to ask the largest questions."---Barbara Hoffert, National Book Critics Circle Journal
"Jarman's goal is to create an ethics of memory, a system that will allow the transcendent moment to be relived, but which still admits the cheapness and vulgarity of such moments. This clear-headed realism is perhaps the most compelling feature of Jarman's writing, and the source of its authority and elegance."---David Wojahn, The Missouri Review
"Jarman is a poet in whose work intelligence is as important, obvious, and strong as emotion."---Booklist
"In Questions for Ecclesiastes, Mark Jarman takes on the idea of holiness in an unholy world, of spiritual realities in secular America."---Charles Simic. The Nation
"Jarman's poetry is God-haunted. He writes as an unorthodox but essentially Christian poet who embraces paradox and treats contradiction, to use Simone Weil's phrase, as a lever for transcendence."---Edward Hirsch, The Washington Post
Bone Fires: New and Selected Poems by Mark Jarman, collects work from over thirty years and charts his spiritual development as he grows from a poet of childhood and nostalgia to a poet of adulthood and the struggle of faith. The section of new poems includes work published in such distinguished journals as American Poetry Review, Georgia Review, The New Republic, and Poetry, and in the yearly anthology Best American Poetry. As Library Journal noted in its recent estimation of Epistles, "While most of Jarman's poems explore faith in its many manifestations, there is something here transcendent that speaks to everyone. Highly recommended." Bone Fires is a landmark collection by one of our nation's most distinguished poets.
Industry Reviews
?This is precisely what a new-and-selected collection should be: a book better as well as bigger than any of those its contents are culled from. Confirming the poet's intergrity and consistency, it attests an invaluably unique poetic personality."
?Ray Olson, Booklist (starred review)
?Subdued and tender, almost without a false move, these pages (reminiscent of Carl Dennis) return to the scenes of his first work, the source of his strength. Readers who think they know Jarman all too well may find an enlightening surprise."
?Publishers Weekly
?Finally, I admire the way Mark Jarman's poetry worries spiritual concerns while remaining rooted in the everyday. His Bone Fires: New and Selected Poems collects poems from eight volumes, starting with 1978's North Sea, and includes 19 new pieces that are as always brave and honest. . . . A great overview collection."
?Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
?Following the development of Jarman's poetry and his uncompromising vision of poetry-making as sacred work, our contributor, Michelle Boisseau, found herself amazed again and again at how the unaffected discipline of Jarman's craft helps him plumb the reaches of human experience. One of the most moving and exhilarating experiences she had this year reading poetry."
?Kansas City Star
?This volume of Mark Jarman's selected poems represents more than thirty years of work and eight books of poetry. The collection offers a look at Jarman's transition from writing focused on nostalgia and childhood to poems centered on faith and spirituality and the struggle inherent in those ideals."
?American Poet
?The myriad gifts of this gathering of poems confirm that Jarman is one of America's most distinct and important voices, and prove that it is possible to sustain an original style over a long career (in Jarman's case, an understated, wry, perspicacious, darkly complicated and formal engagement with belief and unbelief) while avoiding self-parody of a falling off of vision."
?Lisa Russ Spaar, Image
?Jarman's spiritual questions intersect with?in fact, are inseparable from?his profound regard for the natural world. . . . His just-released collection, Bone Fires: New and Selected Poems, includes recent poems that regard the confounding violence and beauty at the center of life.
?Maria Browning, Chapter 16
?I wish every congregation could have a Mark Jarman in its midst, because a poet's tithe of attention and language is as valuable as the widow's mite. Bone Fires?with its meditations on faith and doubt, hope and silence, and the sacred and desecrated fragments of God's world?is a gift to the whole church and the whole creation."
?Katherine Willis Pershey, The Christian Century
"Jarman's new poems are as good as any of his career. . . . Bone Fires serves well as an introduction to the poet's work, but it must also be welcome to pre-existing Jarman fans. Although there are only 19 new poems, they tackle the full range of his obsessions?faith, of course, but also family, history, and regret. At 58, Jarman is by no means at the end of his career, in spite of the common assumption that accompanies a book of selected works. This poet seems to anticipate this assumption and answers it in the opening poem, ?How My Sister, My Mother, and I Still Travel Down Balwearie Road," which concludes, ?It is still cold, still dark, just as I said, and late. But not as late as I thought."
?Erica Wright, ForeWord Reviews
?Bone Fires is an excellent representative collection of Jarman's work, perfect for those who are longtime fans or reading him for the first time."
?New Pages
"Jarman, who teaches at Vanderbilt University, writes about family life, memory, grace, the night sky and other mysteries divine."
?Ray Waddle, The Tennessean
"This is precisely what a new-and-selected collection should be: a book better as well as bigger than any of those its contents are culled from. Confirming the poet's intergrity and consistency, it attests an invaluably unique poetic personality."
-Ray Olson, Booklist (starred review)
"Subdued and tender, almost without a false move, these pages (reminiscent of Carl Dennis) return to the scenes of his first work, the source of his strength. Readers who think they know Jarman all too well may find an enlightening surprise."
-Publishers Weekly
"Finally, I admire the way Mark Jarman's poetry worries spiritual concerns while remaining rooted in the everyday. His Bone Fires: New and Selected Poems collects poems from eight volumes, starting with 1978's North Sea, and includes 19 new pieces that are as always brave and honest. . . . A great overview collection."
-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
"Following the development of Jarman's poetry and his uncompromising vision of poetry-making as sacred work, our contributor, Michelle Boisseau, found herself amazed again and again at how the unaffected discipline of Jarman's craft helps him plumb the reaches of human experience. One of the most moving and exhilarating experiences she had this year reading poetry."
-Kansas City Star
"This volume of Mark Jarman's selected poems represents more than thirty years of work and eight books of poetry. The collection offers a look at Jarman's transition from writing focused on nostalgia and childhood to poems centered on faith and spirituality and the struggle inherent in those ideals."
-American Poet
"The myriad gifts of this gathering of poems confirm that Jarman is one of America's most distinct and important voices, and prove that it is possible to sustain an original style over a long career (in Jarman's case, an understated, wry, perspicacious, darkly complicated and formal engagement with belief and unbelief) while avoiding self-parody of a falling off of vision."
-Lisa Russ Spaar, Image
"Jarman's spiritual questions intersect with-in fact, are inseparable from-his profound regard for the natural world. . . . His just-released collection, Bone Fires: New and Selected Poems, includes recent poems that regard the confounding violence and beauty at the center of life.
-Maria Browning, Chapter 16
"I wish every congregation could have a Mark Jarman in its midst, because a poet's tithe of attention and language is as valuable as the widow's mite. Bone Fires-with its meditations on faith and doubt, hope and silence, and the sacred and desecrated fragments of God's world-is a gift to the whole church and the whole creation."
-Katherine Willis Pershey, The Christian Century
"Jarman's new poems are as good as any of his career. . . . Bone Fires serves well as an introduction to the poet's work, but it must also be welcome to pre-existing Jarman fans. Although there are only 19 new poems, they tackle the full range of his obsessions-faith, of course, but also family, history, and regret. At 58, Jarman is by no means at the end of his career, in spite of the common assumption that accompanies a book of selected works. This poet seems to anticipate this assumption and answers it in the opening poem, "How My Sister, My Mother, and I Still Travel Down Balwearie Road," which concludes, "It is still cold, still dark, just as I said, and late. But not as late as I thought."
-Erica Wright, ForeWord Reviews
"Bone Fires is an excellent representative collection of Jarman's work, perfect for those who are longtime fans or reading him for the first time."
-New Pages
"Jarman, who teaches at Vanderbilt University, writes about family life, memory, grace, the night sky and other mysteries divine."
-Ray Waddle, The Tennessean
