Death Be Not Proud: The Art of Holy Attention. David Marno. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Pp. xi+315.

Abstract

When Marno returns to this poem—his readings often come in dispersed bits—he again insists on the temporal paradox but focuses on the opening of line 11, “This first last end.” He insists that the reference of “This” is to “all the divine works of redemption, be they in the past, present, or future tense” (144), so that normal temporality disappears and “holy attention” can supervene on it. But this is to read these lines out of context. Within the poem, the deictic refers to the speaker’s death—“thou crown’st our ends” (line 9). The speaker looks forward to his death as a beginning. Moreover, the poem ends triumphantly—with a high heart and the assertion that salvation will come to “all that will”—which certainly is meant to include the speaker. When Marno turns to the poem for the third time, he acknowledges the theology that it “appears” to assert (“confidence in the efficacy of human works toward salvation”), but insists that the next poem undoes this (rather than merely changing topics [221 and 300 n. 3]).