Mark Jarman

Mark Jarman was a professor I had at Vanderbilt. He is also a fairly well-known modern American poet. He is a great teacher and an incredible poet. His poems are tight, well-mannered, and often surprisingly humorous. This is the first poem from his most recent publication, Questions for Ecclesiastes, which is a book of poems sifting through the troubling relationship between God and humankind. I highly recommend this volume... you'll enjoy it.

Ground Swell

Is nothing real but when I was fifteen,
Going on sixteen, like a corny song?
I see myself so clearly then, and painfully--
Knees bleeding through my usher's uniform
Behind the candy counter in the theater
After a morning's surfing; paddling frantically
To top the brisk outsiders coming to wreck me,
Trundle me clumsily along the beach floor's
Gravel and sand; my knees aching with salt.
Is that all that I have to write about?
You write about the life that's vividest.
And if that is your own, that is your subject.
And if the years before and after sixteen
Are colorless as salt and taste like sand--
Return to those remembered chilly mornings,
The light spreading like a great skin on the water,
And the blue water scalloped with wind-ridges,
And-- what was it exactly?-- that slow waiting
When, to invigorate yourself, you peed
Inside your bathing suit and felt the warmth
Crawl all around your hips and thighs,
And the first set rolled in and the water level
Rose in expectancy, and the sun struck
The water surface like a brassy palm,
Flat and gonglike, and the wave face formed.
Yes. But that was a summer so removed
In time, so specially peculiar to my life,
Why would I want to write about it again?
There was a day or two when, paddling out,
An older boy who had just graduated
And grown a great blond moustache, like a walrus,
Skimmed past me like a smooth machine on the water,
And said my name. I was so much younger,
To be identified by one like him--
The easy deference of a kind of god
Who also went to church where I did-- made me
Reconsider my worth. I had been noticed.
He soon was a small figure crossing waves,
The shawling crest surrounded him with spray,
Whiter than gull feathers. He had said my name
Without scorn, just with a bit of surprise
To notice me among those trying the big waves
Of the morning break. His name is carved now
On the black wall in Washington, the frozen wave
That grievers cross to find a name or names.
I knew him as I say I knew him, then,
Which wasn't very well. My father preached
His funeral. He came home in a bag
That may have mixed in pieces of his squad.
Yes, I can write about a lot of things
Besides the summer that I turned sixteen.
But that's my ground swell. I must start
Where things began to happen and I knew it.

Ok, I just have to include one more. This poem is one of the Unholy Sonnets, which are also included in Questions for Ecclesiastes. It's my favorite one (there are 20 of them).

There was a pious man upright as Job,
In fact, more pious, more upright, who prayed
The way most people thoughtlessly enjoy
Their stream of consciousness. He concentrated
On glorifying God, as some men let
Their minds create and fondle curving shadows.
And as he gained in bumper crops and cattle,
He greeted each success with grave amens.

So he was shocked, returning from the bank,
To see a flood bearing his farm away--
His cows, his kids, his wife, and all his stuff.
Swept of fhis feet, he cried out, "Why?" and sank.
And God grumped from his rain cloud, "I can't say.
Just something about you pisses me off."