Four Lectures

by Lisa Jarnot

Four Lectures by Lisa Jarnot is the seventh book in the Bagley Wright Lecture Series, comprising autobiographical essays that form an intimate, uncompromising, and generous glimpse into a remarkable life in poetry.

Across the lectures, or talks, given between October of 2020 and December of 2021, Jarnot examines what it means to be a woman in a male-centered experimental tradition, to have white privilege, and to write poetry. With colloquial ease and wit, Jarnot investigates the generative tensions at the intersections of traditional and experimental forms, develops relationships between ‘deep gossip’ and ecstatic connectedness, and considers the prophetic tradition in American poetry as inflected through counter-cultural spirituality. Ultimately, Jarnot presents poetry as a calling, asking us to consider the means by which poets can envision a new heaven and a new earth.

88 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 14, 2024

Reviews

[Bill Shultz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book sutured a wound in my sense of self dating back to the pandemic era. Just before the pandemic shutdown, I had entered the MFA program at Naropa University, a natural next step after hitchhiking, backpacking, meditation retreats, farming, and living a season at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center. I saw myself then, felt myself, as a poet-seeker. The pandemic era somehow severed that, I emerged with a law degree from Georgetown and a (home office) desk job. This book reminded that being a poet is an every day, every moment affair that is as much or more about community and relationships and communion as it is about writing. In the end, though, it is the language that is the medium of the prophetic transmission of all of that living.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

2 1/2 stars? I didn’t find these lectures as compelling as I had hoped. But another great cover from Wave books.