On “Jorie Graham’s ‘New Way of Looking’” by Thomas Spiegelman: A Critical Précis

In “Jorie Graham’s ‘New Way of Looking,’” Willard Spiegelman explores Graham’s often contradictory approach to poetry. Spiegelman answers the many critics interested in Graham’s poetic development and perceived style transformation by pointing out that Graham’s ideas remain surprisingly constant throughout her career. In other words, Graham is consistently inconsistent. Her constancy is in her steady unsteadiness. Spiegelman says it is “hard to get to know her” (Spiegelman 174), and hard to describe her because she resists being known and resists describing and description. For Graham, “Frames exist to be broken” (Spiegelman 187), but although broken, the audience is still able to identify many of Graham’s frames. There is clear evidence in Graham’s poetry that points at the impulse towards narrative, but she, like Pollack, does not wish to create her art for its meaning’s sake. Her rejection of complete storylines is a “provocative breaking-up and breaking-down of story and scene” (Spiegelman 183). And though it may make her poems difficult to access, it also allows for a multiplicity of interpretations.  Graham makes an important statement about life and culture—that “all creation… starts with the promise of satisfaction but invariably ends with the admission of the serpent into the garden” (Spiegelman 186-187). By not completing her narratives and thus not allowing for satisfaction, her poetic mirrors that (in her apparent philosophy) inevitable disappointment and fulfillment that will come from involvement in the world.

               

Spiegelman discusses at length the way Graham sits squarely in liminal spaces both in her exploration of herself and of the world. Her “style features fragments and ellipses as indexes of boundaries and the slippages between them” (Spiegelman 199). This fragmentary style and descriptions that are less descriptive than they are “like air and water… invisible or dark” (Spiegelman 174) create a distance between Graham’s self and the reader.  Through this interesting, though somewhat distant voice, Graham considers, literally, a new way of looking, a new way of considering looking, and a new way of considering the word “looking.” Spiegelman concludes that Graham’s “subject matter—the relation of body to soul, the visible to the invisible” (Spiegelman 200) necessitates categorizing her differently than she perhaps has been before—“among the poets of sexual and religious bliss” (Spiegelman 200), and that Graham’s readers will have to be forever satisfied with the process, for there will be no conclusion. 

Week Nine: Jorie Graham, The End of Beauty

Jorie Graham’s The End of Beauty seems to be of quite a different timbre than the other books we’ve read so far this semester. I wonder how much its earlier publication date (1987) has to do with what seems to me like a much different tone. The book feels a little more familiar than some of the other things we’ve read since it’s decidedly more formal and traditional than some of the other works—it’s definitely more reminiscent of the kind of classic poetry I was exposed to in high school. Upon opening the book and seeing the form on the page, I wasn’t surprised that the poems seemed to stay in the realm of Adam and Eve and Biblical creation. I think it’s very interesting how subtly Graham shifts from her Biblical theme to more personal poetry. It happened so gradually that I wasn’t very aware of it until I got to “Breakdancing.”

                It seemed like the first major subject change. Looking back I realize that there’s a lot of non-Biblical content before that, but Breakdancing itself seems like an odd, even startling topic for a poem in this volume, or, at least, it did to me until I read it. When I think of breakdancing I think, “cool,” and not much beyond that. So I was impressed with how much beauty Graham sees there and how beautifully she describes the act of breakdancing, using that as a vehicle to discuss a lot more than just a dance. But like much of the volume, I kind of lost track of where this poem was. That feeling of lostness was comfortable in some of the more abstract poetry we’ve read because it made sense, but it was a little disconcerting here.

                I think the major strength and beauty in Grahams poetry comes through her stunning images and descriptions. “Breakdancing” has some moments that are surprising but so fitting. And while some of the other poets have used vague hints towards imagery to then create a scene, Graham makes interestingly specific use of words and phrases to cultivate really full, rich images. A favorite from “Breakdancing” is “Minutes exploding like thousands of silver dollars all over your/ face your hands but tenderly, almost tenderly, turning mid-air, gleaming,/ so slow, as if it could last.” I’ve never heard anyone describe anything as being like thousands of exploding silver dollars. So the image itself is compelling and lovely, but the surprise of its uniqueness adds an interesting dynamic to the emotional response the poem provokes. I’m looking forward to talking more about Graham in class. 

Week Eight: Anne Carson

               
               In quick conversations about Anne Carson’s Nox with some of my classmates, the most frequently recurring word is “pretentious,” which has, so far, been consistently followed with the question: is this poetry? I both agree and disagree with this assessment (but mostly disagree). I remember several very similar conversations in my high school and undergrad music departments about John Cage: is his four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence really music? Does his chaotic orchestra of radios count as a song? Nox is pretentious in much the same way that some of John Cage’s musical compositions are—by which I mean that I think we say “pretentious” when we really mean “brilliance for brilliance’s sake.” Yes, self-indulgent displays of talent and ingenuity can be irritating, but I don’t think that makes them any less significant. It didn’t seem important at the time, but looking back, I can see that the concert of John Cage pieces I saw when I was fifteen was something that contributed to a big shift in the way I thought (and now think). It was a sudden realization that definitions and impositions of limits are not nearly as useful or productive in the world of art as they are in other genres of life’s-work.

                So when Stephen Burt points out in his review that Nox may be more akin to an artists’ book than the typical volume of poetry, I agree with him just like I agree with those who say Cage’s works are more like directions for performance art installations than music. But my answer to the recent conversations I’ve had about Nox is that being one type of art shouldn’t exclude something from also being another. So certainly it’s clear that Nox is a piece of visual art—it’s impossible to talk about the volume without discussing its unusual aesthetic qualities—but that doesn’t preclude it from being poetry.

                I love the way Nox’s structure (poetic as well as physical) creates an experience for the reader that goes far beyond the typical reading experience. Nox was exciting for me before I even opened it—it shipped in a box much larger and heavier than I expected to receive a book in, so I assumed it was multiple books. It was surprising when I opened the large box to find a smaller box. Its shrink-wrap suggested that there was something of value inside worthy of protection. After unwrapping it I tried to open the book like I would any other book—held up in front of me—but it was awkward and heavy and started to fall apart this way. The way Nox is built demands that the reader give it a place to sit, which I think seems important.

                During my reading of Nox I was struck by how my surprise at its form turned to a feeling of familiarity. I have a shoebox somewhere in my attic full of all the scraps that, though ultimately insignificant, still seem too important to throw away yet—letters, tickets, photographs, programs from recitals and concerts. Every few years I come across this box and set it on the table or floor in front of me in exactly the same way I had to set Nox down. When I dig through my shoebox of scraps I invariably discover memories I’ve forgotten. When I opened Nox I felt I was meant to discover something. Carson’s Nox is a box full of memories too, but rather than memories of her own life, they are the few fragments she has of her brother’s life. But I don’t think the form is limited to representing the memory box—it’s a coffin, a treasure box, and, as my friends have argued, an artists’ book, and probably many things of which I haven’t yet thought. I don’t think I’ve read any other book that can be defined as representative of so much.

                The poems themselves felt like a journey—I found myself wanting to rush past the translations of Catullus on the right to get to more of Michael’s life story, so initially I had to force myself to slow down to read the book in order. But when more of Carson’s personal words began coming through in the definition, I lost my urge to move on from the left-hand pages. It didn’t occur to me until reading Chaisson’s review that literally half the paper in this box is blank. The initial realization seemed like a disappointment in all the wasted space, but then I had to agree that a half-blank book is very fitting for a story about the death of an estranged family member. The one thing that I didn’t particularly enjoy about the book was the art. The photographs were so interesting and made all the words so real, but the strange paintings were more disturbing than enlightening. They all look like the artwork of a mentally ill person. I’m assuming that the eerie, disturbed quality of the paintings is meant to underscore the grief of the experience, but I wonder if there are other reasons for such stilted, untalented art in what is clearly a work of art.


*Photo credit: www.paintedfishstudio.com

Week Six: Anne Winters

After a couple of weeks of severe uncertainty, I feel much more comfortable in the realm of Anne Winters. That’s certainly not to say that I have full understanding, but Winters’ prosy style is more akin to other things that I’ve read in the past. Her narrative, perhaps simply because of the sheer number of words, is more substantially fleshed out and I think slightly (only slightly) less open to interpretation than the sparse verses of Merwin and Valentine.

I found The Displaced of Capital very moving. The stories were so singular, so compelling, I don’t think I’ll forget them any time soon. “The Grass Grower,” being so near the beginning of the book, is the one that first drew me in. It never ceases to be startling that people alive today have memories of the Jim Crow South, whether firsthand or one degree removed.

I thought the way Winters explores displacements feels like a continuation (in more detail) of Rich’s “Dislocations.” Winters’ narrative of Pilar and Pequita in “An Immigrant Woman” was fascinating. I’m curious if these stories are true. Winters voice is so genuine and she so clearly places herself in the narratives that it’s easy to believe them and accept them as fact. I think it’s interesting that Winters is the first of our activist poets who makes it plain that her message comes not just from conviction, but from very specific experiences. After Merwin, Rich, and Valentine, Winters specificity is surprising, not just in the full, round, characters she describes in the beginning half of the volume, but in the “Sonnet Map of Manhattan” we also get specificity of place—a very detailed exploration of New York and of the poet’s relationship with her father.

The final poem, “The First Verse,” continues in volume’s pattern of specificity but seems different from the clear narrative arcs of the majority of the poems. “The First Verse” was the place I felt most intrigued. I enjoyed reading what I assume was Winters’ own process through reading and translating the first verse of the Hebrew Bible. I was especially interested in the third stanza which talked about the goddess Tiamat and referenced the feminine aspects of God in the Psalms. I’ve always been interested in the way God’s absence of gender turned into militant insistence of his manhood. I’m very much looking forward to discussing all of these. I think everyone will have a lot to say about these much more explicit poems.

Week Five: Jean Valentine

When we read Merwin I latched on to the idea of the aging poet reflecting on his life as my anchor in understanding. With Rich, as soon as I saw the date (2000-2004) on the cover I knew I would be reading poems that came from the time surrounding September 11^th, 2001, so that tragedy was my anchor. I also found she shared some ground with Merwin—since both of them were writing from advanced age, they had an often similar tone—soft even when discussing difficult things.  In Break the Glass, Jean Valentine reads like a cross between Merwin and Rich. She also, writes from a perspective of experience. Her sparseness of language reminds me of Merwin’s simple, yet complicated work. But rather than the more internal poeticism of Merwin, Valentine leans more towards Rich’s political and social agenda.

                As I began reading, noting these similarities and differences, I thought my newfound familiarity with Merwin and Rich would make Valentine easy to understand. No such luck. Her poetry is beautiful in its vagueness and its measured, careful use of words, but I found it difficult to unravel such simple, yet very complicated poetry. I then turned to Buber, looking for enlightenment and found it… to a degree. Buber’s writing, just like Valentine’s is hard to describe—it’s so simple that it’s complicated. The translation felt poetic—it was easy to see Buber as part of Valentine’s lineage, and I think his I-You I-It words pairs (Buber 54) and his concepts of you, I, and it are very interesting.

                Valentine’s “Lucy” and Buber’s I and Thou had similar effect on me. I liked the words I read, but had to work to gain any comprehension and earned only the smallest amount. It seemed like in “Lucy,” Valentine is using the discovery of the missing link to explore other missing things or things that were once missing but are now filled—similar, in my mind, to the kind of recursive logic that Buber employs in I and Thou. I’m really looking forward to discussing “Lucy”—I feel like there’s so much there and I want to understand it better.

                A poem that particularly lingered in my mind after reading Valentine (besides “Lucy”) was “The Young Mother.” This poem was one of the most clear to me and though my interpretation is likely wrong I found it meaningful. I thought it beautifully described conception and birth in just a few short lines—an impressive feat for sure. And I took it to be, overall, a statement about the status of the single mother in American society—that she is excluded from the “white ship Witholding” (Valentine 46)and left to sink or swim alone with her children. It was very memorable poem because of that image—an enormous ship that carries some to middle class and beyond while leaving others behind with no way to board.

                Overall, I found Break the Glass to be hauntingly beautiful. Though I often felt lost, too far from meaning to even reach for it, the words as they stood on the page were beautiful in themselves. I didn’t feel like I had to understand these poems to find them moving. But hopefully more understanding with come with our class meeting!

Week Four: More on Rich

EDIT: Oops! Missed the mark big time on this one, but in any case, this was my process in attempting to understand this poem.

              
           In “Dislocations: Seven Scenarios,” Adrienne Rich depicts seven very distinct situation and continues using pronouns strategically. This time, however, it is less clear to me what, exactly, her strategy is. This poem is intriguing to me because I found it very powerful though I don’t quite feel able to articulate why. Continuing in my fixation with Rich’s pronoun usage, I was looking for a formula in “Seven Scenarios.” All of her poetry seems so intentional I expected to find a clear pattern, but after reading and re-reading many times I’m still not sure what I’m seeing that I like so much.

As in “The School among the Ruins,” she’s still demanding that the reader acknowledge how thin the lines are between the comfort we enjoy now and what could be, that seemed clear to me. While in “The School Among the Ruins,” Rich paralleled the trauma of the events of September 11, 2011, with the wartime traumas faced by other countries, the first section of “Seven Scenarios” places the reader in the situation of an elderly immigrant. Though the finger-pointing “you” is only used once here, I felt that once was enough to bring me into the role of the adult immigrant. I thought this was a clever reversal of the stereotypical angry foreign neighbor—I liked how Rich essentially said, “Don’t get mad, this could be you someday.” Rich also employs the second-person pronoun in the second section of the poem. I am much less sure of the circumstances of this section—is this about an addict? A patient? A prisoner? But regardless, Rich forces empathy from the reader (even the confused reader like me) when we find ourselves clutching for bread. I think this section is beautiful and moving, but I don’t think I would feel comfortable defining the situation here yet. I think it speaks to Rich’s effectiveness that I don’t feel I need to know what her poems are about to feel their power.

In the third, fourth, and seventh sections Rich moves to third person. My initial reaction is that Rich allowed the third person in the sections that are somehow familiar yet distant to the readers. Perhaps where we can easily insert ourselves she sees no need to push us? The seventh section presents a lovely introduction to a man about to leave for a Doctors without Borders stint and the fourth is the story of an under-funded Veterans hospital. Both of these situations seem fairly familiar to me yet outside of my every-day realm, so my hypothesis held true for me there. I’m less sure about the meaning of the third section. It begins discussing an infection that “drinks like a drinker/ whatever it can” (87). Immediately, reading the word “infection” in a politically-minded poet’s work I jumped to literal infection and assumed this poem was about AIDS, but the final line which says that the solipsist is still safe made me doubt that interpretation. Since solipsism is a philosophical idea, I began to think the infection may be one as well. So could the infection represent hatred or racism? Either way, this fit in with my idea that topics of familiar distance receive third-person treatment.

Section five seems a little more personal, so using the second person makes sense here as well. Section six, however, initially seemed to destroy my theory—its message of perceived failure seems like a universally relatable topic. Then I realized that it’s the only one that is both vague enough and specific enough that (I think) most everyone can immediately relate to—not in a second-hand, I-saw-on-the-news kind of way, but a really personal experience. So I’m going to place it outside my theory as a different kind of second-person voice from Rich.

I’m unsure of everything, but I like it—it’s a comfortable uncertainty.

Week Three: Adrienne Rich

           While Merwin used the poetic “I” to explore the Self, Adrienne Rich seems to use her “I” (and “you” and “we” and “us”) to explore social and political issues and their relationship to self in The School among the Ruins. The “I” makes her poetry intimate and personal for the reader even though many of her topics are very global. Her writing is so much more than “’grinding a political axe’” (“Blood, Bread, and Poetry” 53)—she begs her reader to see political issues as things that affect everyone’s “I”—as issues that are more than headlines.  Placing herself so prominently in her poems also allows her to emphasize her philosophy that a poem is “not a single, encapsulated event” (54), but in fact is a snapshot from the progression of her life.  Using the vulnerable “I” also puts Rich “face to face with both terror and anger” (56) in a clear way. But she also frequently eschews the I in favor of “you” or “we.” Her “we” and ”us” confront large, frightening concepts and issues together. These second-person pronouns also emphasize the immediacy of the issues she’s addressing—they prevent us from reading with too much distance. I think this strategy is particularly clear in “Ritual Acts.”

It’s clear throughout all these poems that Adrienne Rich sees the power of pronouns , but that awareness is made explicit in “Transparencies.” While talking about known things, Rich says, “any child on the playground knows/That asked your favorite word/in a game/you always named a thing, a quality, freedom or river/(never a pronoun never God or War)” (The School Among the Ruins 49). Pronouns make things real, make things close, and Rich uses that reality and closeness effectively.

I very much enjoyed reading Rich. I wasn’t expecting to from the moment I heard “political” used to describe her, but her beautiful language and honest, straightforward opinions won me over quickly. Where I expected to find angry rants I instead found observations as gorgeous as they were keen. Out of all of them, the poem that particularly resonated with me is “The Eye.” I think it says beautifully how different this war is from all previous wars—we are in the eye of the war, safe, far-removed, and largely unaware of the real effects of its storm. Although this poem, dated 2002, was (I assume) written in response to the shock of the events of 9/11, I think it is extremely relevant to the cultural attitude today. While my husband was deployed I was frequently frustrated by people who, upon learning that he was in Afghanistan, told me that they saw on the news that Obama ended the war and everyone’s coming home and there’s no more danger. They told me these things while my husband zipped up body bags, attended memorial services, and received enemy fire more days than he didn’t. Every one of those well-meaning people were in the eye of the war but completely unaware of it.

I love that Rich dates her poems—knowing context gives them a very specific depth and meaning, especially since most were writing in and around a very difficult, shocking time in our history. But I also liked ignoring the dates sometimes. Her words are so applicable to so many times and situations—“The Eye” is a perfect memorial to the now-shattered peace that existed in the days before 9/11, but the idea of a war’s eye is one that transcends that moment in history. I’m very interested to talk more about her, particularly the second section of the book, which, in its specificity, was somewhat less accessible to me than the other parts of the volume.

Week Two: More on Merwin

How do Merwin’s poems explore and test the notion of the poem as an expression of lived experience and memory?

                Reading Helen Vendler’s review after finishing The Shadow of Sirius was enlightening. It was clear while reading that Merwin’s lived experiences and memories were the subjects of the bulk of the volume. But just from reading these poems I never would have guessed at the man tragedies of Merwin’s life. I’m glad that I didn’t know the details of his life story before reading because it allowed me to see how relatable all of the poems are. Merwin uses very simple words and images in these poems—words and images that I think most people would call “familiar.” The way Merwin relates his own memories sparks memories of my own, though now, having read his brief biography I have to say in reality we’ve shared few experiences. Though written with specific language in response to a difficult life, the emotional response they provoke is vague enough to allow anyone to find a way to relate. And his difficult past makes both his wistful, sad poems more meaningful as well as the few very happy ones. “Day without a Name” stood out to me as absolutely joyful—a word that I don’t think I would use to describe many other poems in Sirius. Although Michael Davidson says that “it makes little sense to speak of poetry's ability to express the Self, capital S,” I think that Merwin does express his full Self through these poems. Does that mean each reader can “know” Merwin from these pages? Not fully, no. But I do think each reader can identify with and know a part of Merwin’s self from time spent in these pages.

It was also fascinating to hear about Merwin’s changing style. Since I haven’t read any of Merwin’s early work, I was unaware that his poems were once very different. The knowledge that Merwin was once full of poetic vinegar lends even more weight to the simplicity of these “worn words.” I thought Vendler expressed very eloquently the importance of Merwin’s lack of punctuation. I felt that she said what I wanted to say last week. It’s also interesting to compare his lifetime transformation to the progression I see in this book: it seems like the first two sections are more internal, while the third looks out into the world. The shift to nature, other poets, and animals seemed sharp to me, but not at all unwelcome.

I think that Merwin creates experiences through his poems that can be universally shared though they are based on his very specific lived experiences and memories. And I found it interesting that when Merwin’s poems become very specific he lets the reader know. The four poems in the third book written “to” people are titled with their names so that we, too, can know who inspired him—three poets: Ruth Stone, Basho, and Su Tung-p’o, and his wife, Paula. I think it would be difficult to discuss Merwin if we were to treat these poems as something other than an expression of lived experience and memory. 

Week One: W.S. Merwin

                  What are Merwin’s poems made of?

On The Shadow of Sirius

Before I opened this volume, the only Merwin poems I had read were the few that we looked at in American Lit. These were different and surprising to me and I found the line structure very interesting. I think The Shadow of Sirius was a great companion to the introductory chapter of The Art of the Poetic Line because Merwin uses the line so effectively. His poetry is unpunctuated in the conventional sense, but his lines (which vary in size) seem to take the place of punctuation. In the poems with shorter lines (which is most of them), the line breaks seem to be more effective than periods or commas possibly could be. This is something that I had never really thought about before reading Longenbach’s many re-linings, if you will, of King Lear’s mad speech. Although the poetic line seemed intentional and important to me in the past, I wouldn’t have been able to explain why I felt this way. But now I guess I can say that the frequent enjambment in Merwin’s poetry helps me see how the speaker’s “mind is in motion” (Longenbach 10).  While I don’t feel that Merwin’s speakers share in Lear’s madness, I do see a lot of emotion in Merwin’s syntax and a reflection of how memory works. Sirius is clearly an older man’s book. I think even if I had somehow avoided looking at the author photo on the back cover of the book I would have known that these poems couldn’t have been written by someone young. The volume—especially in its many references to family and its deep sense of life experience and resulting understanding—reads very much like a beautiful conversation with an elderly person reflecting on the past.

“The Song of the Trolleys” is one that has stuck itself in my brain. It startled me in reading because its subject seems more tangible than most of the other poems’.  The lines—short, halting, but never stopping—gave me a feeling that I’m hearing a memory that both takes some work to recall and also contains more than the speaker can express to the reader. I hope that makes sense—it’s like it’s a memory so old that it’s too full and the speaker has to concentrate to choose the parts to share. In reading the short lines aloud I found that the constant enjambment of these brief lines encouraged me to move quickly through some lines but to linger in the breaks between others. This poem also stood out to me as one of the more rhythmic ones in the reading we’ve done thus far. I enjoyed the way it sounded—echoing the rhythm of the memory of the trolleys’ “song.” The repeated “-ing” verbs made me think, oddly enough, of Poe’s “The Bells,” one of the few poems I remember reading in high school, since I imagine a trolley “tolling” and “clanging” as well.

So, after some rambling, I believe that Merwin’s poems are made of memory, of a full lifetime’s experience, of nostalgia, and of line structure that punctuates better than punctuation. Is the poetic line the punctuation of emotion? I like thinking of it that way.