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Mark Jarman is a professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. He is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently To the Green Man, published by Sarabande. His book The Black Riviera won the 1991 Poets' Prize. Questions for Ecclesiastes was a finalist for the 1997 National Book Critics Circle Award and won the 1998 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.
Individually and collectively, the poems in Mark Jarman's beautiful book, To the Green Man, recognize both the need for the consolations of faith and the elusiveness of faith in the face of the hard facts of experience: the loss of loved ones, depression, mortal fears, the sheer contingencies of daily life. Beyond the wonderful music of his lines, the formal poise, the mix of narrative and lyric modes, what makes To the Green Man such an important and memorable book is its enactment of a spiritual struggle to be at once at home in the world and astonished by it. --Alan Shapiro
