The Secret of Poetry

by Mark Jarman

This first collection of literary essays by a founder and leading poet-critic of the New Narrative/New Formalist revival explores the relationship between poetry and religion, the legacies of Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, E. A. Robinson, Robinson Jeffers, and Donald Justice.

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Daniel Klawitter]

"Just as poetry persists in the face of widespread indifference, so has a sense of the religious in poetry continued to exist despite the indifference of most poets to religion."

-Mark Jarman.

[Diann Blakely]

THE SECRET OF POETRY collects a variety of Mark Jarman’s poetic essays and reviews, their subjects ranging from Randall Jarrell to Donald Justice to Jorie Graham. Jarman, who teaches at Vanderbilt, won the highly prestigious Lenore Marshall Award for QUESTIONS FOR ECCLESIASTES in 1998, so an essay called “Poetry & Religion” isn’t a surprise. But Jarman has also gained a well-deserved reputation for stringent fair-mindedness in writing about poets and subjects that might seem antithetical to his vision.

Brilliance and open-minded humility rarely coexist; as Richard Tillinghast says of Jarman, “One would hardly expect this stout defender of narrative verse to have thought hard and independently about postmodernists like John Ashbery and Jorie Graham.” Tillinghast goes on to compare Jarman with Eliot, maintaining that the contemporary poet “provides invaluable service, in his reconsiderations of neglected masters, to readers looking for a balanced historical view that would include neglected masters such as Robinson Jeffers and Edwin Arlington Robinson.” THE SECRET OF POETRY, like Eliot’s SELECTED ESSAYS, he says, “belongs on the very short shelf of essential commentary on poetry.”









(originally published in the NASHVILLE SCENE)