Questions for Ecclesiastes
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Winner—1998 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
Finalist—1997 National Book Critics Circle Award
In Questions for Ecclesiastes, Mark Jarman takes on the idea of holiness in an unholy world, of spiritual realities in secular America... His poems made me think of altars, the kind we sometimes make unconsciously on a side-table or dresser where we deposit sea shells, pebbles, lost buttons, and other interesting finds, arranging them just so, as if to make an offering to an unknown god.-Charles Simic, Judge, The Academy of American Poets
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A devout and learned exploration of the absence and silence of God.-The Philadelphia Inquirer
In this deeply impressive collection, Jarman is concerned with God, His grace, and humans' relations with Him... In 20 'Unholy Sonnets, ' he takes up matters of theology directly and so appositely for these times that some of them may become pulpit as well as anthology staples.-Ray Olson, Booklist
yAn A+ level candidate for glory, so peculiar in the excellence and pleasure it offers as to baffle anyone in the business of awarding laurels.-The Hudson Review
Inverting Donne's 'Holy Sonnets' in his ironic 20-poem 'Unholy Sonnets' sequence, Jarman's tone is discursive instead of devotional, comic instead of firm. The sonnets...explore faith with a sense of inevitability. Yet they are less about God than about our relationship to God and our inability to understand God's judgement.-The Boston Book Review
Memorable for its section 'Unholy Sonnets'...Questions for Ecclesiastes ultimately captures a poet's challenge to God: Are you there, or aren't you?-Seattle Weekly
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