Mark Jarman’s Poetic Exploration of Zeno’s Paradox and Timeless Existence

Description

Paul Dry Books, paperback

Publication Date: January 10, 2023

Publisher Marketing: The poems in Mark Jarman’s new collection, Zeno’s Eternity, take their cue from Zeno’s paradox, which says that since space is infinitely divisible, an arrow traveling toward a target will never reach its destination. Everything exists in a kind of suspension.

From “The Arrow Paradox”

Zeno sent
his arrow flying
endlessly from point
to point along its arc
to make a point
about eternity:
getting there is tricky.

Though our lives run on, we may feel that certain moments are timeless, and love that moves us toward each other can give us a sense of eternity. Portraying moments from ordinary life and from times long past, moments both pivotal and mundane, Jarman encourages the reader to feel the beat of time and its inexplicable stillness. By making scenes indelible, the poet stops time; and we might ask ourselves, is this not only Zeno’s eternity, but ours, too?

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