In Zeno’s Eternity, Mark Jarman clues his readers in on just what this eternity of Zeno might be and, then, what it might mean to him. Here’s the first stanza of his poem, 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.

Does the arrow ever arrive at its target? Though our lives run on, we feel certain moments timeless–they never pass. Is this not only Zeno’s eternity, but ours, too?

These intensifications of life, felt as if taking place in no more than a moment, are the source and subject of the poems in Zeno’s Eternity. Here are poems a spouse writes to a spouse, a grown person writes to the parent envisioning them both younger, a visitor to a foreign place writes a souvenir for his family. The poet intends that his words stop time by making scenes indelible. As you read the poems in Zeno’s Eternity, you’ll fine Mark Jarman has, like Zeno, apparently stopped time.