Overlord

by Jorie Graham

What does it mean to be fully present in a human life? How -- in the face of the carnage of war, the no longer merely threatened destruction of the natural world, the faceless threat of spiritual oversimplification and reactive fear -- does one retain one's capacity to be both present and responsive? And to what extent does our capacity to be present, to be fully ourselves, depend on our relationship to an other and our understanding of and engagement with otherness itself? With what forces does the sheer act of apprehending make us complicit? What powers lord over us and what do we, as a species, and as souls, lord over?

These are among the questions Jorie Graham, in her most personal and urgent collection to date, undertakes to explore, often from a vantage point geographically, as well as historically, other. Many of the poems take place along the coastline known as Omaha Beach in Normandy, and move between visions of that beach during the Allied invasion of Europe (whose code name was Operation Overlord) and that landscape of beaches, fields, and hedgerows as it is known to the speaker today. In every sense the work meditates on our new world, ghosted by, and threatened by, competing descriptions of the past, the future, and what it means to be, as individuals, and as a people, "free."

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2005

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

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is thoroughness? What is it possible to see, and what of what’s seen is really perceived? I would say this line between seeing and perceiving is the theme in most of the work I’ve read by Jorie Graham. Where she frames the two modes of observation as contradiction and complement. Ultimately leading to the limits of her own perception, even as she shows how extensive her perception is. “Do you see now?” She might ask her reader? And it’s not clear if she asks this as a gesture to “seeing” what she’s said, or “seeing” what it’s like that she can’t see everything.

Perhaps this sounds like a very abstract book. It is. But I never feel separated from reality, as it feels like Graham is often prompted by her reality to better understand why the reality is the way it is. It’s a discourse. A pleasure. Enveloped within a lush, maddening conceptual poetics. And it’s most successful In this book when the politics she’s endeavored to address feels unavoidable. Where she works to account for and synthesize the many different concerns she has ranging from ecopoetry to D-Day to docupoetics to historical accounting to personal accountability when you’re living in a political state. As she wraps these pieces together, she kneads at an underlying question—is it enough to simply perceive this conglomeration of issues? Is writing about it enough? It feels like one of those postmodern moves from the 1960s where the writer looks at her own methods of writing and wonders whether writing of this kind is capable of making the changes that it feels so attached to when she’s writing about them. Where it wonders aloud whether coherence is even relevant in a world that has so many concerns.

And yet, Graham’s ability to occupy her writing with the present moment, or to overflow the present moment with so many different concerns in her writing, is most surprising for me when she conceptually stretches ecopoetic destruction of the planet with the destruction of human life during D-Day. How is it a military operation that would have boasted an utter thoroughness in human planning not go according to plan? And yet there was destruction. And how does that reflect on humans destroying the natural world? When Graham draws implicit connections like this, and with her style and voice makes it feel like I’m participating as she intimately draws out her reasoning, I feel something that’s hard to describe. Like a combination of dark stones in my arms and legs, a Christian revival, and that sudden rush that can come with insight. It’s like the state of mind you would hope prayer could consistently lead you to, which is why I think Graham has so many prayer poems in the book. The desire to apprehend the infinite, but then realizing there’s so much of the finite around you, you’re not likely to get past all that material.

[Burgi Zenhaeusern · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this collection at once brilliant and hard to read, the long poems full of incredible turns and echos which raise intriguing questions about human seeing and perceiving, sense of time, self, religion and so much more. It's easy to get overwhelmed by this flowing wealth. But, giving each poem a second, more "bird's eye view" reading makes the stream appear. At times, I'm not sure what to make of the often generalizing "we" and "you". Neither in the author's following collection "Sea Change" for that matter. There as well as here are instances where the speaker seems to question her own use of these pronouns and whom they refer to. An interesting analysis could be hidden in this aspect of the two collections. It is often dawn in the poems, a sense of emergence and possibility all around. I love how the speaker recreates this sense again and again, the very beginning of seeing and being. The poem "Impressionism" is my favorite instance of such a recreation. Many poems somewhat remind me of Chinese Classical literature's concepts around emergence/disappearance/constant change.

[Janée Baugher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another Pulitzer Prize winner. A highly inaccessible book which summons ghosts of past European battles in many persona poems. The subject matter is too masculine for my tastes. Deft deep-imagery and poetic leaps, though the theme of the book doesn't particularly touch me.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

liked this! thought it was accessible enough. sure you gotta work a bit but hey that’s life

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

Other/Over our Jorie Knows how to write a poem

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Assume that a pose can be a good thing, and you might make it through this book with a modicum of pleasure.

I prefer Jorie's "self" poems to her "other" poems, as in the opening piece, titled "Other" -- ironically.

This one maintains greater focus than the subsequent "Sea Change," with (for me) more memorable passages, such as the haunting wrench of a close from "Dawn Day One":

"Don't worry where else I am, I am here. Don't
worry if I'm still alive, you are."

[Nicola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though I don't pretend to understand every part, I think Graham is brilliant and important. As a reader, I am happy to struggle with her work because it is infinitely rewarding. I love her elongation of time, as well as time's collapse, the thicket of punctuation she creates, and her political and philosophical bents. She takes the idea of relativity to the nth but still has moral and cultural backbone and lyric gravity.

[Gerry LaFemina · Rating 2 out of 5]

On the concept level, I like this book; the various "prayers" and persona poems in the voices of soldiers give the book an ethos I can get behind. Unfortunately, on the execution level, the book leaves me cold. These poems are dense--I'm okay with that--but they have no compression, no sense of craft. Graham does this random indented short line that feels like a gimmick more than it feels like a crafted decision, and the poems drag.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another wonderful collection from Graham. The title references Operation Overlord, i.e., the Allies D-Day invasion of Normandy during World War II. You'll think she's writing about today for much of it.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

People in my workshop said this book was didactic but whatever because I thought it was incredible. Jorie Graham is one of my favorite poets.

[Sarah]

I didn't enjoy this one bit. I guess the second star is in recognition of what it must have taken to write these poems, which were pretty much beyond me.

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

emotionally and intellectually draining. period. been a long time since a book made me feel like that. i don't love graham--i find her purposefully obtuse at times, but this book isn't that way.

[Carole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moving and poignant.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a very difficult book to read for the average reader. She really does push language, maybe even invented her own. I have not fully grasped yet. Great book for studying line and breath though.

[Grey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really really like some of the poems in here. Others couldn't hold my interest at all.