Dailiness: Essays on Poetry - Paperback

by Mark Jarman (Author)

"In this wonderful collection of essays, Mark Jarman explores with wit and passion the practice of poetry--of making it, of reading it, of living it. In his vivid analyses of works by Brooks, Boisseau, Donne, Herbert, Rukeyser and Twichell, among others, he explores how the poems and their authors negotiate time and mortality, faith and devotion. He also offers an intimate examination of his own gorgeous work and how it comes onto the page. A delight for readers and writers of poetry."--Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy and Mercury

The essays in Dailiness are about how a poet makes a poem. For Mark Jarman a poem results from a deliberate and conscious act. He is especially interested in the way human consciousness connects devotional prayer to poetry. In these essays he considers poems written millennia apart--from Gilgamesh to George Herbert's work, from the poems of Robert Frost to those of Seamus Heaney, to his own recently-written poems and those of his contemporaries. As the poems celebrate the work of daily creation, they possess a religious aspect. In Dailiness Jarman sheds light on how poems accomplish this work.

Author Biography

Mark Jarman is the author of eleven books of poetry. The Heronry is his most recent. He has also published two books of essays and reviews, won awards for his poetry, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is Centennial Professor of English at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.