Swarm: Poems

by Jorie Graham

A contrary poet friend once there are people who don't get Jorie Graham, and then there are people who pretend that they do. Swarm finds the Pulitzer Prize winner operating at more than her usual level of opacity. Bumps and jumps, bizarre spacing, a certain fascination with center justification--this is poetry that sits as uneasily on the page as it does in the reader's mind. Not that there aren't moments of arresting lyricism in her eighth volume--notably, the title poem, in which a transatlantic phone call becomes a stirring (if oblique) meditation on separation and "listen to / the long ocean between us / --the plastic cooling now--this tiny geometric swarm of / openings sending to you / no parts of me you've touched, no places where you've / gone--" But all too often, the reader finds little that's this concrete to catch hold Graham seems to specialize in making the abstract more so. As in past volumes, the poet holds her gorgeous phrasing sternly in check. Here, however, Graham goes further, stripping away all of her art's usual image, music, the sensory world. "I have severely trimmed and cleared," she informs us, in "From the Reformation Journal," and indeed she has. "Uncertain readings are inserted silently," she adds, traveling away from the problematic first person even as an editor/interrogator both cross-examines and defends the result. In other poems, both God and the beloved figure as "radiant absence," and even a glance in the mirror--"that exit wound"--leads us away from rather toward ourselves.A swarm, as Graham's notes rather immodestly inform us, is "a body of bees which ... leave the hive or main stock, gather in a compact mass or cluster, and fly off together in search of a new dwelling-place, under the guidance of a queen." Accordingly, these poems find her in the process of abandoning the tropes of mythology and religion, busily destabilizing the old forms in search of the new. Does Graham discover her new dwelling-place? "Explain," the imperative voice in Swarm repeatedly begs, and it's an entreaty worth heeding. Read these poems once, read them again, and you still may be no closer to an answer than you were before. --Mary Park

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published November 3, 1999

About the author

Jorie Graham was born in New York City in 1950, the daughter of a journalist and a sculptor. She was raised in Rome, Italy and educated in French schools. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris before attending New York University as an undergraduate, where she studied filmmaking. She received an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa.

Graham is the author of numerous collections of poetry, most recently: Place (2012), Sea Change (2008), Overlord (2005), Never (2002), Swarm (2001), The Errancy (1997), and The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994, which won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Her many honors include a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship and the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

She has taught at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and is currently the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University. She served as a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets from 1997 to 2003.

Reviews

[Pewterbreath · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the most depressing book I've read in a long time. Graham's poetry is extremely fragmented in this volume in a sort of scattered reflection of the human/diety connection. For some reason it depresses it in the same way that philosophy books used to depress me---it equals a sort of common denominator of life that is so simplified and logical (despite the large amount of subjectivity in the voice of these poems) that it kind of erases all of the variations and joys of life. The style reminds me of Robert Duncan (another voice of the fragmented) but unlike Duncan, Graham does not wander---her focus is squarely on the individual's desire for knowledge and the impossiblity to have any certain knowledge of any kind. In metaphor after metaphor she continues, unwaveringly, on this focus in an almost nihilistic desire to shed all illusions away. I'm not sure that this is brilliant or suicidal---I just know that this is one painful read. I admire it; but I cannot enjoy it--it is not to be enjoyed.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

feels to me one of her best & that’s saying something they’re all up there. still, Eve, The Spectators, plenty others. she keeps it going lots of little miracles

[Russel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Love your suit.

[Mikayla Barrett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll be honest I couldn't connect to most of the poetry in this I found that the structure of the poems was a bit hard to read and the themes of the poem was hard to follow but I think that with time and age and experience I might understand it a bit better and there were still some parts that I understood and those were good so I'm giving it a three for now I don't know if that would go down or up based on if I could potentially read it again in the future and get a better understanding of it but it was a bit confusing it's definitely something for someone who's experienced in poetry like I said the structure of the overall poems was hard to follow at times did not make sense.

[Dooflow · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve never been a fan, but this book just clicked for me.

[Leonard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of insightful poems by an experienced and accomplished poet.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love the Emily Dickinson references!

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

bit too cryptic for my taste but I liked em

[nkp · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s not you, Jorie Graham, it’s me. Maybe I’ll return to your work with clearer eyes someday.

[tonia peckover · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm going to need someone to explain half these poems to me.

[مصطفى الريس · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astonishing.

[Harry A · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've enjoyed reading Graham's poetry for many years, but while I always feel she's doing something interesting, I almost never fully understand it.

I do see that she's praising the transitory, the particular, the short-lived, against the universal unchangeable permanent ideal of the classical neoplatonists and many since. That's especially clear in my favorite poem of hers, "Erosion", which is my favorite because I at least think I *do* understand it! And how many poems attacking neoplatonism are there? (I keep thinking of Goethe's Faust, who's supposed to say "Verweile doch, du bist so schön" when he encounters the perfect moment, but never does.)

And I assume her fracturing language is supposed to communicate something about the transitory particular moment that a more standard use of language misses. But how it's supposed to communicate that, and what it's supposed to communicate, is still obscure to me. I found _Place_ much clearer, and so went back to _Swarm_, hoping I'd understand it better this time. And I do see more clearly that her language is expressing the fractured nature of our ordinary consciousness. So I've made progress. But I'm afraid I still have a long way to go to understand what each of her poems is conveying.

I like her poetry, and am glad that I'm coming closer to understanding it, and look forward to continued progress.

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the book to follow Errancy? I'm not sure where the turn was, nor why the "Underneath" needs to be so reticent, considering how voluble it had been in previous book. I feel in the trap of judging this Graham in light of the others, and I find it difficult to find the same enthusiasm. If I frame it as a book written at the time of serious personal crisis (is this a chronicle of her split with James Galvin?), then I follow along. Otherwise I find the air part of the swarm more a dispersion of sense.

[Mark Desrosiers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sure, I was disappointed by her crafty dissembling and rewarding incompetent lovers and asskissers (underscored later by Foetry). And I distrust anyone associated with the Iowa Workshop. But this is great poetry: semi-autistic, eternal, trance-like, simultaneously hilarious and solemn. Like an oracle. I'll never read another book of her poetry because she's obviously a nest-baked cougar crone with useless privileges, but this is good. Her peak.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of Graham's best collections, she does a total 180 and strives for minimalism, emphasizing fragments and the importance of silent spacing on the page. Very sharp interpretations of Sappho's fragments, Lear and the meaning of kingship, the Oresteia. Very large influence from Anne Carson.

[Mary · Rating 1 out of 5]

How disappointing!! I just couldn't appreciate this at all...and I tried. It was frustrating because there would be little snippets of glowing lines that would just dissipate into single words with disconnected meanings. Just not for me...

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Flawed but essential.

[Abraham · Rating 1 out of 5]

Will somebody please please tell me how to enjoy Jorie Graham's poetry?

[Carole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes, I've read this one too and own it.

[C · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some stellar lines, but a fragmented mess of a book that refuses to make meaning out of its many disparate parts.

[Erin Miller · Rating 1 out of 5]

Completely cryptic. Maybe it's just not my style?

[Jude Nonesuch · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a bit pretentious..

[Apoorva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice structure, but I didn't understand much. Too stream of consciousness.