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Dream Of The Unified Field
The 1996 Pulitzer winner in poetry and a major collection, Jorie Graham's The Dream of the United Selected Poems 1974-1994 spans twenty years of writing and includes generous selections from her first five Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts, The End of Beauty, Region of Unlikeness, and Materialism.
208 pages, Paperback
First published November 21, 1995
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About the author
Jorie Graham
61 books172 followersJorie 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 50 reviews
June 19, 2008
Jorie Graham, The Dream of the Unified Field: Poems 1974-1994 (Ecco, 1995)
I love Jorie Graham's early work, the wunderkind poems of the seventies that established her as a real force in the world of poetry. Good, solid imagist stuff that tells its tale and gets out:
“...I'd watch
its path of body in the grass go
suddenly invisible
only to reappear a little
further on
black knothead up, eyes on
a butterfly.”
(“I Watched a Snake”)
A book like this, on the other hand, that goes from the very beginnings of her career to the most recent stuff she'd done at the time shows the journey from that exciting young poet to someone who's gone so far off the rails that one's not terribly sure what to do with her stuff any more. First, the showing stopped and the telling started. Then the experiments (I assume they're experiments) in repetition began. Then came the leaving out of words, or the substitutions of “x” for various nouns. The end result is the long, rambling, boring pieces that make up the latter half of this book.
“Consisting of fountains, yes, but invisible, no?
And of what we spoke of in the dead of _________ once long ago.
And of long ago.
And of the fountains too, no?...”
(“Untitled”)
(note, as well, these are the only lines in the poem that rhyme.)
Instead of this, I'd suggest picking up the first two books material from this compilation is taken from (Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts and Erosion), which are both wonderful. As for the rest... well, if the excerpt above didn't drive you nuts, go from there. **
I love Jorie Graham's early work, the wunderkind poems of the seventies that established her as a real force in the world of poetry. Good, solid imagist stuff that tells its tale and gets out:
“...I'd watch
its path of body in the grass go
suddenly invisible
only to reappear a little
further on
black knothead up, eyes on
a butterfly.”
(“I Watched a Snake”)
A book like this, on the other hand, that goes from the very beginnings of her career to the most recent stuff she'd done at the time shows the journey from that exciting young poet to someone who's gone so far off the rails that one's not terribly sure what to do with her stuff any more. First, the showing stopped and the telling started. Then the experiments (I assume they're experiments) in repetition began. Then came the leaving out of words, or the substitutions of “x” for various nouns. The end result is the long, rambling, boring pieces that make up the latter half of this book.
“Consisting of fountains, yes, but invisible, no?
And of what we spoke of in the dead of _________ once long ago.
And of long ago.
And of the fountains too, no?...”
(“Untitled”)
(note, as well, these are the only lines in the poem that rhyme.)
Instead of this, I'd suggest picking up the first two books material from this compilation is taken from (Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts and Erosion), which are both wonderful. As for the rest... well, if the excerpt above didn't drive you nuts, go from there. **
September 26, 2018
Picnic
The light shone down taking the shape of each lie,
lifting each outline up, making it wear a name.
It was one day near the very end of childhood, Rome,
out on a field, late April, parents, friends,
after a morning’s walk (nearly mid-century),
some with baskets, some with hats,
(so does it matter that this be true?) some
picking flowers, meaning by that a door that does not open—
And why should I tell this to you,
and why should telling matter still, the bringing to life of
listening, the party going on down there, grasses,
voices? Should I tell you who they are, there on the torn
page—should we count them (nine)—and then the girl who
was me
at the edge of the blanket,
two walking off towards what sounds like a stream now?
Pay attention. Years pass. They are still there.
And the sorrow kept under. And the quick jagged laughs.
And all the while underneath something else is meant—
the ladder with no rungs perhaps, or things
exist?
Meanwhile the wind bends the grasses flat then up again, like that,
and at the picnic someone’s laugh breaks off the mouth
and comes to this.
Waiting is different from patience, friend. This
is the picnic.
“Unminding mind, keep in the middle—until” says the silly
book where
“Shiva Replies”.
In the field four bluebirds land. Flish.
Then no wind for a moment.
Then someone’s laugh, although they are lying,
and X who will sleep with father
later this afternoon.
The mouths of the gods are stuck open really.
They are sated, exhausted, and still they must devour us.
After lunch we take a walk.
We walk into their eyes, they cannot stop us,
we slide on in, a half a dozen human beings
with the day
off. Their faces are huge.
Back there someone laughs longer than before, too long.
Click of prongs against a metal bowl.
And you, you have to take this as I
give it, don’t you, eyes, mouth?
Breathe, friend,
the sense here between us must be gotten past, quick,
as any stalk must be gotten past, any body,
that the hollowness it ferries up slip into here, quick,
using shape as its cover,
one of me here and one of me there and in between
this thing, watery,
like a neck rising and craning out
(wanting so to be seen) (as if there were some other place dear god)—
When I caught up with them they were down by the pond,
father with X.
I looked into the water where it was stillest.
Saw how each side wants the other to rip it open.
Later that day mother came up into the bathroom,
daylight toothy by then,
color of gunsheen—dusk—
We sat there awhile, neither reached for the switch.
It was not the thing we call time which was ticking
softly. Come here she said gripping my head hard in her hands,
both of us facing into the mirror.
Then they struck out into the forest one here one there
wherever they save it thickest wherever path or track
was absent. As if there were some other place dear god.
Have you ever looked into standing water and seen it going
very fast,
seen the breaks in the image where the suction shows,
where the underneath is pointed and its tip shows through,
maybe something broken, maybe something spoked in there,
your eyes weeds, mouth weeds,
no bed showing through, no pressure from some shore, no
shore? I looked in there.
I thought “I should go in”. I thought “I want the fate
to come up now, make it come quick, this thing that is
the predicate”—“is is is is” I thought.
The face stayed there.
She put her hand out to the glass.
We both stared in—me in the front of her.
She pulled my hair back very tight.
Took black and started in on the right eye.
Put it on swiftly. Her hands smelled like wine.
She shadowed the cheek, held the lips open, fixed the
edge red. She powdered, streaked. I
never moved. Both of our eyes on the face, on
the third
party.
Reds, blacks.
The lights started to go we didn’t move.
The silver was gone. The edges on things. The face still glowed—
bright in the wetness, there.
Why should the shut thing not be true enough
anymore?
(Open up open open the stillness shrieked.)
Why do we think? What is the thinking for?
When Psyche met the god he came down to her
through the opening which is waiting,
the not living you can keep alive in you,
the god in the house. We painted that alive,
mother with her hands
fixing the outline clear—eyeholes, mouthhole—
forcing the expression on.
Until it was the only thing in the end of the day that seemed
believable,
and the issue of candor coming awake, there,
one face behind the other peering in,
and the issue of
freedom. . . .
Outside it’s almost spring in earnest. The Princess
known as Luciana
back from the picnic
has spent one afternoon of light on the lawn tweezing hair
from her legs. More drinks. The women talk.
Should she marry the arms merchant named Rudi?
Is hisses the last light on the reddish berries, is is the much
blacker shadows of spring now that the leaves are
opening, now that they’re taking up
place.
*
Transcribed by the dogged and generous Caleb xo
The light shone down taking the shape of each lie,
lifting each outline up, making it wear a name.
It was one day near the very end of childhood, Rome,
out on a field, late April, parents, friends,
after a morning’s walk (nearly mid-century),
some with baskets, some with hats,
(so does it matter that this be true?) some
picking flowers, meaning by that a door that does not open—
And why should I tell this to you,
and why should telling matter still, the bringing to life of
listening, the party going on down there, grasses,
voices? Should I tell you who they are, there on the torn
page—should we count them (nine)—and then the girl who
was me
at the edge of the blanket,
two walking off towards what sounds like a stream now?
Pay attention. Years pass. They are still there.
And the sorrow kept under. And the quick jagged laughs.
And all the while underneath something else is meant—
the ladder with no rungs perhaps, or things
exist?
Meanwhile the wind bends the grasses flat then up again, like that,
and at the picnic someone’s laugh breaks off the mouth
and comes to this.
Waiting is different from patience, friend. This
is the picnic.
“Unminding mind, keep in the middle—until” says the silly
book where
“Shiva Replies”.
In the field four bluebirds land. Flish.
Then no wind for a moment.
Then someone’s laugh, although they are lying,
and X who will sleep with father
later this afternoon.
The mouths of the gods are stuck open really.
They are sated, exhausted, and still they must devour us.
After lunch we take a walk.
We walk into their eyes, they cannot stop us,
we slide on in, a half a dozen human beings
with the day
off. Their faces are huge.
Back there someone laughs longer than before, too long.
Click of prongs against a metal bowl.
And you, you have to take this as I
give it, don’t you, eyes, mouth?
Breathe, friend,
the sense here between us must be gotten past, quick,
as any stalk must be gotten past, any body,
that the hollowness it ferries up slip into here, quick,
using shape as its cover,
one of me here and one of me there and in between
this thing, watery,
like a neck rising and craning out
(wanting so to be seen) (as if there were some other place dear god)—
When I caught up with them they were down by the pond,
father with X.
I looked into the water where it was stillest.
Saw how each side wants the other to rip it open.
Later that day mother came up into the bathroom,
daylight toothy by then,
color of gunsheen—dusk—
We sat there awhile, neither reached for the switch.
It was not the thing we call time which was ticking
softly. Come here she said gripping my head hard in her hands,
both of us facing into the mirror.
Then they struck out into the forest one here one there
wherever they save it thickest wherever path or track
was absent. As if there were some other place dear god.
Have you ever looked into standing water and seen it going
very fast,
seen the breaks in the image where the suction shows,
where the underneath is pointed and its tip shows through,
maybe something broken, maybe something spoked in there,
your eyes weeds, mouth weeds,
no bed showing through, no pressure from some shore, no
shore? I looked in there.
I thought “I should go in”. I thought “I want the fate
to come up now, make it come quick, this thing that is
the predicate”—“is is is is” I thought.
The face stayed there.
She put her hand out to the glass.
We both stared in—me in the front of her.
She pulled my hair back very tight.
Took black and started in on the right eye.
Put it on swiftly. Her hands smelled like wine.
She shadowed the cheek, held the lips open, fixed the
edge red. She powdered, streaked. I
never moved. Both of our eyes on the face, on
the third
party.
Reds, blacks.
The lights started to go we didn’t move.
The silver was gone. The edges on things. The face still glowed—
bright in the wetness, there.
Why should the shut thing not be true enough
anymore?
(Open up open open the stillness shrieked.)
Why do we think? What is the thinking for?
When Psyche met the god he came down to her
through the opening which is waiting,
the not living you can keep alive in you,
the god in the house. We painted that alive,
mother with her hands
fixing the outline clear—eyeholes, mouthhole—
forcing the expression on.
Until it was the only thing in the end of the day that seemed
believable,
and the issue of candor coming awake, there,
one face behind the other peering in,
and the issue of
freedom. . . .
Outside it’s almost spring in earnest. The Princess
known as Luciana
back from the picnic
has spent one afternoon of light on the lawn tweezing hair
from her legs. More drinks. The women talk.
Should she marry the arms merchant named Rudi?
Is hisses the last light on the reddish berries, is is the much
blacker shadows of spring now that the leaves are
opening, now that they’re taking up
place.
*
Transcribed by the dogged and generous Caleb xo
September 23, 2020
"12/as the apple builds inside the limb, as the rain builds/in the atmosphere, as the lateness accumulates until it finally/is,/as the meaning of the story builds,/13/
scribbling at the edges of her body until it must be told, be/14/taken from her, this freedom,/15/so that she had to turn and touch him to give it away/16/to have him pick it from her as the answer takes the question/17/that he should read in her the rigid inscription/18/in a scintillant fold the fabric of the daylight bending/19/where the form is complete where the thing must be torn off/20/momentarily angelic, the instant writhing into a shape," p. 53, "Self-Portrait as the Gesture Between Them [Adam and Eve]"
"27/the feeling of being a digression not the link i the argument, a new direction, an offshoot, the limb going on elsewhere,/28/and liking that error, a feeling of being capable *because an error,/29/of being wrong perhaps altogether wrong a piece from another set/30/stripped of position stripped of true function/31/and loving that error..." p. 54
scribbling at the edges of her body until it must be told, be/14/taken from her, this freedom,/15/so that she had to turn and touch him to give it away/16/to have him pick it from her as the answer takes the question/17/that he should read in her the rigid inscription/18/in a scintillant fold the fabric of the daylight bending/19/where the form is complete where the thing must be torn off/20/momentarily angelic, the instant writhing into a shape," p. 53, "Self-Portrait as the Gesture Between Them [Adam and Eve]"
"27/the feeling of being a digression not the link i the argument, a new direction, an offshoot, the limb going on elsewhere,/28/and liking that error, a feeling of being capable *because an error,/29/of being wrong perhaps altogether wrong a piece from another set/30/stripped of position stripped of true function/31/and loving that error..." p. 54
June 10, 2022
Transcendent with a few rough patches.
July 16, 2021
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1996.
I found the vast majority of the poems to be lacking in both specificity and context. The latter is forgivable but the former is a real problem because the interest level wanes very quickly. Very old feel to the poems - hard to establish a visual connection.
I did like the poem ‘Two Paintings by Gustav Klimt’. It was provocative.
2 stars. Probably just not my kind of poetry.
I found the vast majority of the poems to be lacking in both specificity and context. The latter is forgivable but the former is a real problem because the interest level wanes very quickly. Very old feel to the poems - hard to establish a visual connection.
I did like the poem ‘Two Paintings by Gustav Klimt’. It was provocative.
2 stars. Probably just not my kind of poetry.
March 21, 2025
Line break open field poetics queen
September 14, 2023
very good, so good! JORIE
January 21, 2022
The Dream of the Unified Field is a selection of Jorie Graham's poems from five collections, including:
Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts
,
Erosion
,
The End of Beauty
,
Region of Unlikeness
, and
Materialism
...
From Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts ...
From Erosion ...
From The End of Beauty ...
From Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts ...
The slow overture of rain,
each drop breaking
without breaking into
the next, describes
the unrelenting, syncopated
mind. Not unlike
the hummingbirds
imagining their wings
to be their heart, and swallows
believing the horizon
to be a line they lift
and drop. What is it
they cast for? The poplars,
advancing or retreating,
lose their statue
equally, and yet stand firm,
making arrangements
in order to become
imaginary. The city
draws the mind in streets,
and streets compel it
from their intersections
where a little
belongs to no one. It is
what is driven through
all stationary portions
of the world, gravity's
stake in things. The leaves,
pressed against the dank
window of November
soil, remain unwelcome
till transformed, parts
of a puzzle unsolvable
till the edge give a bit
and soften. See how
then the picture becomes clear,
the mind entering the ground
more easily in pieces,
and all the richer for it.- Mind, pg. 15-16
From Erosion ...
How hard it is for the river here to re-enter
the sea, though it's most beautiful, of course, in the waste
of time where it's almost
turned back. Then
it's yoked
trussed. . . . The river
has been everywhere, imagine, dividing, discerning,
cutting deep into the parent rock,
scouring and scouring
its own bed.
Nothing is whole
where it has been. Nothing
remains unsaid.
Sometimes I'll come this far from home
merely to dip my fingers in this glittering, archaic
sea that renders everything
identical, flesh
where mind and body
blur. The seagull squeak, ill-fitting
hinges, the beach is thick
with shells. The tide
is always pulsing upward, inland, into the river's rapid
argument, pushing
with its insistent tragic waves - the living echo,
says my book, of some great storm far out at sea, too far
to be recalled by us
but transferred
whole onto this shore by waves, so that erosion
is its very face.- Wanting a Child, pg. 35
From The End of Beauty ...
1
The gesture like a fruit torn from a limb, torn swiftly.
2
The whole bough bending then springing back as if from sudden sight.
3
The rip in the fabric where the action begins, the opening of the narrow passage.
4
The passage along the arc of denouncement once the plot has begun, like a limb, the buds in it cinched and numbered,
outside the true story really, outside of improvisation,
moving along day by day into the sweet appointment.
5
But what else could they have done, these two, sick of beginning,
revolving in place like a thing seen,
dumb, blind, rooted in the eye that's watching,
ridden and ridden by that slowest of glances the passage of time
staring and staring until the entrails show.
6
Every now and then a quick rain for no reason,
7
a wind moving round all sides, a wind shaking the point of view out like the last bits of rain. . . .
8
So it was to have freedom she did it but like a secret thought.
A thought of him the light couldn't touch.
The light beating against it, the light flaying her thought of him, trying to break it.
Like a fruit that grows but only in the invisible.
The whole world of the given beating against this garden
where he walks slowly in the hands of freedom
noiselessly beating his steps against the soil.
9
But a secret grows, a secret wants to be given away.
For a long time it swells and stains its bearer with beauty.
It is what we see swelling forth making the shape we know a thing by.
The thing inside, the critique of the given.
[...]- Self Portrait as the Gesture Between Them [Adam & Eve], pg. 51-52/blockquote>
From Region of Unlikeness...Look she said this is not the distance
we wanted to stay at - We wanted to get
close, veryclose. But what
is the way in again? And is it
too late? She could hear the actions
rushing past - but they are on
another track. And in the silence,
or whatever it is that follows,
there was still the buzzing: motes, spores,
aftereffects and whatnot recalled the morning after.
Then the thickness you can't get past called waiting.
Then the you, whoever you are, peering down to see if it's done yet.
Then just the look on things of being looked-at.
Then just the look on things of being seen.- Act III, Sc. 2, pg. 143
From Materialism...Watching the river, each handfulof it closing over the next,
brown and swollen. Oaklimbs,
gnawed at by waterfilm, lifted, relifted, lapped-at by all day in
this dance of non-discovery. All things are
possible. Last year's leaves, coming unstuck from shore,
rippling suddenly again with the illusion,
and carried, twirling, shiny again and fat,
towards the quick throes of another tentative
conclusion, bobbing, circling in little suctions their stiff presence
on the surface compels. Nothing is virtual.
The long brown throat of it sucking up from some faraway melt.
Expression pouring forth, all content no meaning.
The force of it and the thingness of it identical.
Spit forth, licked up, snapped where the force
exceeds the weight, clickings, pockets.
A long sigh through the land, an exhalation.
I let the dog loose in the stretch. Crocus
appear in the gassy dank leaves. Many
earth gasses, rot gasses.
I take them in, breath at a time, I put my
breath back out
onto the scented immaterial. How the invisible
toils. I see it from here and then
I see it from here. Is there a new way of looking -
valences and little hooks - inevitabilities, proba-
bilities? It flaps and slaps. Is this body the one
I know as me? How private these words? And these? Can you
smell it, brown with little froths at the rot's lips,
meanwhiles and meanwhiles thawing then growing soggy then
the filament where leaf-matter accrued round a
pattern, a law, slipping off, precariously, bit by bit,
and flicks, and swiftness suddenly more water than not.
The nature of goodness the mind exhales.
I see myself. I am a widening angle of
and nevertheless and this performance has rapidly -
nailing each point and then each next right point, inter-
locking, correct, correct again, each rightness snapping loose,
floating, hook in the air, swirling, seed-down,
quick - the evidence of the visual henceforth - and henceforth, loosening -- Notes on the Reality of the Self, pg. 159-160
January 31, 2018
There are very few poets of Jorie Graham's calibre, few names come to my mind now C.D Wright and Claudia Rankine. These three are in a class of themselves. With the award winning book Jorie has done again what she's a master at: very long poems that one doesn't get tired off.
March 28, 2013
Devon Walker (Editorial Intern): November (2012) has found me moving back and forth between The Dream of the Unified Field, a collection of Jorie Graham poems, and Gina Oschner’s debut collection of short stories, The Necessary Grace to Fall. Both the poems and the stories share a sort of otherworldly logic in which myth effortlessly embeds itself in everyday ritual and history becomes less of an abstract collection of extinguished hours than a malleable and present object being shaped and reshaped by our imaginations, language, and bodies. There are also these fantastic landscapes that unfold in both: Graham’s poems might root you in an initially comfortable interior setting and then spiral out from that point with questions that seem to physically press against the boundaries set forth to contain them–the effect: a tenuously bound and very cerebral landscape; Oschner, on the other hand, uses her landscapes to almost agoraphobic effect, physically locating her characters in these wide open spaces defined by a quiet unimpeded isolation. I have enjoyed both books so much that I have rarely left the house these past few weeks without one or both tucked in my purse.
April 28, 2017
I found this book on a remainder table, opened it at random, and literally got chills reading that first page. This is the book that brought me back to reading poetry, which I'd probably stopped 15 years earlier.
I read it again recently, and its still just a wonderful collection. Graham manages to combine thoughts on important philosophical subjects with a deeply personal view and an astounding command of the language.
Here's how one untitled poem starts:
In the city that apparently never was,
where the hero dies and dies to no avail,
where one is not oneself it suddenly appears
(and you, who are you and are you there?)
I found myself at the window at last,
the room inside dark, it being late,
the ________ outside dark, it being night.
Found myself leaning against the pane, the body beneath
me naked,
and _lateness_ not different from _shadow_ around me,
and nothing true, nothing distracted into shape around me.
Outside, flashing lights, deep gloom.
A moonless enterprise consisting of towers not there to
the naked eye.
I read it again recently, and its still just a wonderful collection. Graham manages to combine thoughts on important philosophical subjects with a deeply personal view and an astounding command of the language.
Here's how one untitled poem starts:
In the city that apparently never was,
where the hero dies and dies to no avail,
where one is not oneself it suddenly appears
(and you, who are you and are you there?)
I found myself at the window at last,
the room inside dark, it being late,
the ________ outside dark, it being night.
Found myself leaning against the pane, the body beneath
me naked,
and _lateness_ not different from _shadow_ around me,
and nothing true, nothing distracted into shape around me.
Outside, flashing lights, deep gloom.
A moonless enterprise consisting of towers not there to
the naked eye.
November 10, 2009
Jorie Graham is a difficult poet. A couple of times years ago I read an earlier book, Materialism, and so knew she can be muddy going. It's also included here in these selected poems. Maybe it's because of that familiarity I think those poems the most accessible here. And maybe it's because their subject matter, with titles like "Relativity: A Quartet" and "The Dream of the Unified Field," is more cosmic. I'm beginning to get her. For me the key to understanding Graham is finding the proper mood to receive the poem being read. Her poetry is bold and exuberant, free-wheeling with words. Rather than bite and crackle with energy, though, like Barbara Hamby's work, say, Graham's poems are spilled, a channeled flow of language. Soaking up meaning from this current filling the troughs of the page can be a challenge. Sometimes I'm thirsty earth, sometimes my mind is clay.
February 9, 2014
A stunner. A former student advised me to read Graham's work, specifically this collection, and he was correct. She's difficult, but not too difficult once you synch with her rhythms and themes (waiting and desire, moments within moments, the shadows of history, impermanence). Very, very rereadable: I especially liked the poems from REGION OF UNLIKENESS (the series that seem to emanate from movie theaters is amazing),"The Tree of Knowledge," and the splendid allusions to HAMLET, WAITING FOR GODOT, and Yeats.
May 21, 2014
What was most interesting to me was the way that these poems didn't read like verse or prose. Rather, I felt myself reading these poems the same way that someone looks at a painting- rich snapshots of a moment that reflect only the moment, rather than a judgement of or explanation for. An interesting collection that is well worth the read if only for the novelty of Graham's approach to her topics. I would definitely recommend this collection.
June 16, 2007
Recommended to me by a high school teacher/mentor my senior year, with the confession that he didn't think he understood it, but was enamored of it nonetheless. I've written on a couple of the poems, but I probably don't understand terribly much - and I'm enamored as well.
I don't care if some say she's passe - I think this book is inspiring and marvelous.
I don't care if some say she's passe - I think this book is inspiring and marvelous.
August 2, 2009
What I've been waiting for!!! A poet who seamlessly integrates philosophical and historical urges with an eye for navigating "the shock of their being a word at all." (quoting a review on the cover). Sometimes she falls (and falls hard hard hard) but way more often than not, she literally takes my breath away.
December 21, 2007
This had a great span of her work. I didn't read everything because I decided to read each book individually because I think it gives you more of a feel of where the writer was coming from when you read a whole book together. I love Jorie Graham.
April 22, 2008
A great read that is helpful to poets of all levels to master writing "no ideas but in things." Jorie Graham allows you to peer into the eyes of the cognitive only when slow-dancing with the perceptive.
November 23, 2008
After reading Sea Changes, I craved more of Jorie Graham. Can one speak of quantum physics through the medium of poetry? In my opinion, that is what Graham has masterfully done. This is a book that I would add to my collection--I truly did not want to return this to the library.
August 26, 2007
Intellectual, beautiful poetry. Complex. So much more to say that I may add to later. She makes the abstract work in her poetry.
January 30, 2008
My first exposure to Jorie Graham at the age of 16...read it on a flight across the Pacific, felt the sensation of the poems grating against laws of physics.
October 15, 2007
my favorite poem from the collection: "The Age of Reason"
January 19, 2008
It's fascinating to follow a Graham poem from start to finish: the way she weaves in and out of narrative and lyric, melding both in a completely distinctive voice that can only be hers.
April 9, 2012
Have you ever thrown a book across the room in disgust? This was mine. I was blown away by the first poem- bought the book- and proceeded to not get it. Eh. Pulitzer-Shmulitzer.
April 4, 2015
Lovely! I'm a fool for poetry! This is wonderful
December 1, 2025
An interesting collection that I stalled out on because I hit a roadblock; that the style changes for the worse halfway through. I read the first half in half a week or so? It has taken me two months to read the next one.
The poems from “Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts” were fantastic and exemplified poetry as a means of describing the most elusive feelings.
The poems from “Erosion” were as good; the rest after were dull and the language dropped and stuttered and the metre was off, there was not the same raw emotion that had peppered the earlier poems.
This did not (as a collection) merit a Pulitzer.
P.S: the selections from “The End of Beauty” were okay.
The poems from “Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts” were fantastic and exemplified poetry as a means of describing the most elusive feelings.
The poems from “Erosion” were as good; the rest after were dull and the language dropped and stuttered and the metre was off, there was not the same raw emotion that had peppered the earlier poems.
This did not (as a collection) merit a Pulitzer.
P.S: the selections from “The End of Beauty” were okay.
August 21, 2023
While some of her poems were good, the more I read the more I hated it. They have a tinge of mania, directionless stream of consciousness that has no real meaning or purpose except to appear complex. The poems are long and they meander with zero purpose to arrive at nothing. Most poets I can find something to love about how they write but I struggled with Graham
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