Professor shares poetry Thursday

Widely published poet and English professor Mark Jarman shared observations of family and religious experience at a poetry reading Thursday.

As a poet in the Blanche Britt Armfield series, he read several excerpts from his 2004 book, “To the Green Man,” and two new poems in his current project, “Christians.”

Armfield, a reader and writer of poetry, endowed this series in the 1980s to promote interest in poetry on the UNC campus.

Jarman, the series’ 22nd reader, is one of America’s leading poets in the New Formalist movement, which gained recognition in the 1980s and seeks to renew respect for meter, rhyme and tradition.

With Robert McDowell, he founded the influential magazine The Reaper, whose manifestos argued against “emotion without narrative” and “poems about poetry.”

“English poetry has traditional structural elements and precedents, and New Formalism is a necessary movement that American poets should feel free to participate in,” Jarman said.

“I don’t write only in forms, but it seems to me that you should know the rules you are breaking if you want to break them.”

New Formalism was a pejorative term at a time when free verse was viewed by many as the only acceptable kind of poetry. The movement was linked by some critics to the reactionary, conservative politics of President Reagan.

Jarman and David Mason went on to edit the anthology “Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism” in 1996.

Jarman was introduced at the reading by his friend, creative writing professor Pam Durban, who said, “Almost alone in poetry, he writes about God without irony, pretense or sentimentality.”

But he feels the label of a religious poet has been “media shorthand” and that he, in many ways, is unlike George Herbert and Gerard Manley Hopkins, who were priests writing for their parishioners.

“I write poems about many things, and they are often about matters of faith and sensing the presence of the holy, not showing believers how to believe,” he said.

The “Green Man” of his latest collection’s title is a pre-Christian figure, he explained, a sacrificial victim whose death was believed to bring about changes of the seasons. He also represents the “wild man of the woods” who looks in on us from outside.

Two of the poems Jarman read reflected on his love for the arts. “In Church with Hart Crane” depicted him as a boy reading poetry in church. “The Wind” described a painting, which spoke to him when he was dealing with the challenges of fatherhood.

“Canticle” employed the form of statement and reiteration found in Psalms and Proverbs to evoke “tragic enactment” and “beautiful repetition” throughout generations.

Jarman, now a professor at Vanderbilt University, has been a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award and the recipient of a Joseph Henry Jackson Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Michael McFee, professor of creative writing, recalled the first time he saw Jarman in Nashville as one of the best readings he has ever attended.

“Since then, I’ve wanted to bring him to campus as the model of a good reader. I’ve also had a number of students ask if we could bring him to UNC, since they admired his poetry so.”

Contact the A&E Editor at artsdesk@unc.edu.