Unholy Sonnet 4

By Mark Jarman b. 1952 Mark Jarman

Amazing to believe that nothingness

Surrounds us with delight and lets us be,

And that the meekness of nonentity,

Despite the friction of the world of sense,

Despite the leveling of violence,

Is all that matters. All the energy

We force into the matchhead and the city

Explodes inside a loving emptiness.

Not Dante’s rings, not the Zen zero’s mouth,

Out of which comes and into which light goes,

This God recedes from every metaphor,

Turns the hardest data into untruth,

And fills all blanks with blankness. This love shows

Itself in absence, which the stars adore.

Source: Questions for Ecclesiastes (Story Line Press, 1997)

Biography

Considered a key figure in both New Narrative and New Formalism, Mark Jarman has exerted a significant influence on contemporary American poetry. In the 1980s, with Robert McDowell, Jarman founded and edited the Reaper, a magazine devoted to reclaiming and promoting poetry that emphasized story and image. Controversially warning "Navel gazers and mannerists” that “their time is running out,” the magazine sought to reestablish . . .

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