Never: Poems

by Jorie Graham

Hardcover, 2002

Status

Available

Tags

Publication

New York : Ecco, c2002.

Description

Jorie Graham's collection of poems, Never, primarily addresses concern over our environment in crisis. One of the most challenging poets writing today, Graham is no easy read, but the rewards are well worth the effort. While thematically present, her concern is not exclusively the demise of natural resources and depletion of species, but the philosophical and perceptual difficulty in capturing and depicting a physical world that may be lost, or one that we humans have limited sight of and into. As she notes in "The Taken-Down God": "We wish to not be erased from the / picture. We wish to picture the erasure. The human earth and its appearance. / The human and its disappearance." With a style that is fragmented and somewhat whirling--language dips and darts and asides are taken--Graham stays on point and presents an honest intellect at work, fumbling for an accurate understanding (or description) of the natural world, self-conscious about the limitations of language and perception.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member abirdman
Jorie Graham is brilliant. Her poetry can be extremely cold and distant-- sometimes opaque-- but is almost always worth the effort to decipher. This is poetry which is the opposite of "daily inspiration" reading, requiring a prodigious investment of time and attention. She writes about the biggest
Show More
ideas our minds can wrap themselves around-- existence and meaning. Read this book to feel very smart.
Show Less

Awards

Massachusetts Book Award (Must-Read (Longlist) — Poetry — 2003)

Language

Barcode

10259
Page: 0.6528 seconds