Broken Time

Book Description
John Mark Eberhart's second poetry collection presents 44 poems in two distinct parts: Music and Lyrics. The first half of the book focuses on musicians and their works, from blues master Blind Willie Johnson and classical composer Charles Ives to the film scores of Elmer Bernstein and Bernard Herrman. Jazz plays a major (or perhaps minor) chord in this section of the book -- the term broken time, in fact, is drawn from a style of playing in which the rhythm section stubbornly refuses to state the beat. In the title poem and the 20 short works that follow, broken time becomes an extended metaphor for life itself. Few of us would say our days always pass to a measured beat; the pace of life slows or quickens according in part, at least, to our triumphs and heartaches, and to how we respond to them. As Eberhart writes in Time Cubed: 'Ghosts whisper to us, / prophetic equations that root out our / fears, square up our hopes, dare us to / live in one past, one future, one present, / one exponential syllable: Now.' Part II, Lyrics, turns largely to the landscapes and atmospheres of the American West and Midwest. In poems such as Farmers, Rural School and The Bitterroot Range, the author examines both the myths and realities of the land west of the Mississippi River. Life on these rolling hills and high plains, dusty trails and county roads, is neither as simple or as innocent as it's usually depicted in films and other mass media -- yet there is redemption and hope to be found along with all else. This section (and the collection) ends with The Gospel of the Dirt, perhaps his most accomplished poem to date.

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