Mark Jarman Reading

I attended the Mark Jarman reading for my first year of the city event. He is a very accomplished poet with several published books and numerous awards. His newest collection, "To the Green Man," is the collection that he read from. Mark Jarman places religious faith in the center of most of his poems. This collection is a special one, because it was written before, during, and after the events of 9-11. We can actually see the changing of tones and types of poems in the book from this event.
Mark Jarman read eleven poems from his newest collection at this reading. The main focus was on religion and the theme of parents with their children, and wanteing to hold on to the paradise which is being expelled.
Jarman picked out one poem in particular, because it dealt with city life, to relate to our own year of the city. This poem, entitled Dialect, was inspired from a radio talk show. When Mark was trying to find out where the accents were from he realized it was from a city very close to his in California. This poem was a response to this as well as the '92 riots. He lived in a very small middle-class town with anglos, hispanics, asians, and a black family. There was also a missle base in his town from where they looked out on a hill to watch the riots in the inland cities. He also talks about the value growth of property in this poem.
When i was listening to the poem it made me realize how similar cities are regardless of where they are located. All have mixed races and their own accents. They also all have events which occurred in or around them which really sparks the interest of the inhabitants.
When such events like the riot described in this poem, or 9-11 which changed the ideas and tones of his poems, occur it makes people stop for a second and think. Usually when horrible things like this happen everybody wants to help and come together for the sake of their city. This is great and all, but it does not last forever. We need to find a way to want to get the best out of our city all the time; inluding helping the homeless and rebuilding broken down areas.
This event relates to the poem by William Wordsworth in one way because they are all poems. The poem, I wandered Lonely as a Cloud, by Wordsworth relates to Jarman's pre-9-11 works, because it is about things in nature and has a nice feeling to it. They both relate the things around them and how they affect their world. For instance Jarman with his daughters and the author and the flowers and nature in general.
The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story about a sick woman who basically goes crazy trying to figure out the pattern in the wallpaper. In his reading Jarman referred to his daughters and how he wants to protect them quite frequently. This is just like John in the story in reaction to his wife. Not only is he a physician, he is her husband. All he wants to do is make her feel better and make sure she gets all the rest possible to help her heal. The problem with the wife was that she would act better and feel better when he was around, but when he was not she really was not well at all. She basically put herself into emotional illness by studying this wallpaper day and night. I think it was to mask her physical illness and give her something that was all hers to do. John may have pushed to hard for her well-being, just like Mark Jarman says there is a point in your life where you have to forgive your loved ones and let them go. Jarman makes that point in his poem The Wind.
The last work we had to read was the story, The Birthmark, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This is a story about a scientist, Aylmer and his obsession to perfect is almost perfect wife, Georgiana, by removing a hand shaped birthmark on her cheek. He actually becomes so needing to remove it that he makes a formula which in turn kills her as the last bit of the birthmark fades. This story makes me think of the poem Outside by Jarman. This poem is about the garden of Eden, but this time around God says there are no forbidden fruits, so they can do whatever they want. This first thing they try to do is escape, because they hear there is a wall and feel too cramped. Then they eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge to help them understand that there is no wall. Then they eat a fruit from the tree of forgetfullness and forget eveything. This makes me think of Hawthorne's story, because the scientest is trying so hard to play the hands of God in getting rid of this birthmark on his beloved's face. When he is too knowledgeable about how to do this he ends up killing here with what he created.
The main focus of these stories and events is to realize that there limitations to relationships between people. When a relationship between two people is too focused on protection and perfection it actually leads to demise. Just like with a city, the people have to make sure there is enough effort put into the well-being of the city, but when people focus too much on perfecting it it almost becomes an impossible thing to achieve. People have to learn to start small and then progress from there.