Scan barcode
bibliogamer's review against another edition
2.0
I don’t
understand
poetry. But maybe someday
I will.
understand
poetry. But maybe someday
I will.
michaelwong's review against another edition
5.0
"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
xterminal's review
3.0
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. **
More...