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Jorie Graham (born May 9, 1950), American poet and the editor of numerous volumes of poetry.
Life
Jorie Graham was born in New York City in 1951 to Curtis Bill Pepper, a war correspondent and the head of the Rome bureau for Newsweek magazine, and the sculptor Beverly Stoll Pepper (born December 20, 1924, Brooklyn, New York). She was raised in Rome, Italy. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, but was expelled for participating in student protests. She completed her undergraduate work as a film major at New York University, and became interested in poetry during that time. (She claims that her interest was sparked while walking past M.L. Rosenthal's classroom and overhearing the last couplet of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" ). She later went on to receive her MFA from the famed Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Graham was married to and divorced from Donald E. Graham, now publisher of the Washington Post.
She married the poet James Galvin in 1983 and the two had a daughter, Emily, in 1984.
Books and Awards
She is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Never (HarperCollins, 2002); Swarm (2000); The Errancy (1997); The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994, which won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Materialism (1993); Region of Unlikeness (1991); The End of Beauty (1987); Erosion (1983); and Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts (1980). She has also edited two anthologies, Earth Took of Earth: 100 Great Poems of the English Language (1996) and The Best American Poetry 1990. 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.
Poetry
Examples available the Academy of American Poets website.
Reviews
Selected Reviews of Graham's most recent book of poetry, Overlord:
Publishers Weekly (US), 24th January 2005
The title for Graham's best book in at least a decade introduces several obsessions at once: it's the code name for American plans on D-Day, a sign for the absence - or perhaps presence - of an omnipotent God, and a term for arrogant nations (the US among them) who have forgotten, or never learned, the lessons of the Greatest Generation. Graham, who won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for The Dream of the Unified Field, pursues familiar metaphysical questions through the long lines and longer sentences of meditations such as 'Upon Emergence': "Have I that to which to devote my / self? Have I devotion?"; a series of poems with the title 'Praying' take the question to its ends, often ending up angry, guilty or shocked. One anecdotal poem depicts her trying and failing to feed a homeless man; a more abstract effort imagines "a horrible labyrinth, this / history of ours. No / opening." Most striking of all are works closely tied to D-Day, to Normandy (where Graham now spends part of each year) and to servicemen's own testimony, which casts contemporary fears into ironic relief: "Are you at war or at peace," Graham asks, "or are war and peace / playing their little game over your dead body?" The vague, notebook-like qualities of Graham's last few efforts baffled some admirers, who will likely, and rightly, see these clear and powerful poems as a return to form.
Library Journal, February 2005
Graham's ninth poetry collection is arguably her most impassioned, if not anxious, meditation on the nature of human presence and the possibility of belief in a diminished, fallen world where "The aim is to become / something broken / that cannot be broken further." Frenetic, one-sided conversations with a God or gods ("Your god might be the wrong one for the circumstances") sweep across the width of the page in long, self-questioning, and self-answering waves, as if the poet's mind were possessed by a relentless insomnia. Tracing the metaphysical scar tissue between raw desire to locate meaning and validation in the physical universe ("It's me I shout to the tree outside the window / don't you know it's me, a me") and the urge to withdraw ("We can pull back / from the being of our bodies...we can be absent, no one can tell."). But the crisis of selfhood is a difficult subject to manage, and Graham's cascading ruminations can turn too theatrical and self-conscious ("Every morning now I am putting these words down / in the place of other words"), as the poet cannot escape the knowledge that her private Gethsemene is, in fact, a public garden. Recommended for academic library poetry collections.
Donna Seaman, Booklist Starred Review
In her previous books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Dream of the Unified Field (1995), Graham explores the divide between perception and reality. In her stunning ninth collection, she is still an agile metaphysician, but her poetic self now kneels with her face in her hands, humbled by illness, war, and the ravaged earth. Forthright, compassionate, and ironic, Graham has crafted poems of lyrical steeliness and cauterizing beauty. The book's title refers to "Operation Overlord," the Allied offensive that culminated in the landing on Normandy's Omaha Beach, and that, for Graham, inspired exquisite and devastating tributes to soldiers. She then links the past to the grim post-9/11 present, where one god is pitted against another, a taxicab ride reveals a tangle of cultural conflicts and personal tragedies, and environmental decimation looms. Graham writes with breathtaking precision about the helplessness one feels in the face of suffering, but because "we cannot ask another to live / without hope," and because the poet's "great desire to praise" remains undaunted, Graham takes up the pen not only to eulogize but also to express "gratitude for the trees / and the birds they house."
Selected reviews:
'There is a buoyancy in Graham's poetry, a freshness of vision which is rare in contemporary poetry.' Roger Caldwell, Times Literary Supplement, 27th June 2003
'After each new book by Graham, I wonder what she will do next. Her courage in remaking her style over the years is exemplary.' Helen Vendler, London Review of Books, 23rd January 2003.
'...one of our most highly imaginative and innovative poets. Her speculative and sensual poetry echoes an aesthetic and cultural past but is, truly, like nothing we've seen before.' David St. John, The Los Angeles Times, 1996.
'They tell us that she teaches at Harvard. They don't say what. Let's hope it is something useful, like nuclear physics, molecular biology, or chiropody. Something hot like that. If it is English, or Creative Writing, god help the future teachers and writers of America.' Lolita Lark on Swarm, in RALPH (The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy, and the Humanities) Vol XXI, No 3 1
The Foetry.com Controversy
The website Foetry.com has accused Graham of cronyism and favoritism in judging poetry contests, awarding prizes and publication to former students and lovers based on personal relationships rather than literary merit. Foetry's own methods have been called into question (see blog example or San Francisco Chronicle article which directly references the Jorie Graham controversy). However, an Open Records Act request forced the University of Georgia Press to reveal that Graham judged the 1999 University of George Contemporary Poetry Series contest. The significance is that she had chosen Peter Sacks, whom she would marry in 2000. The choice raised a number of ethical questions, leading to the retirement of Bin Ramke, editor of the Contemporary Poetry Series 2. Because the Open Records request revealed that Ramke had pushed for the selection of Sacks before all manuscripts had been read and Graham had "concurred," some members of Foetry.com cited U.S. Code regarding mail fraud.
TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 63 — MAIL FRAUD
§ 1346. Definition of “scheme or artifice to defraud”
For the purposes of this chapter, the term “scheme or artifice to defraud” includes a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.
Bibliography
- Overlord, 2005
- Never
- Swarm
- The Errancy
- The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994
- Materialism
- Region of Unlikeness
- The End of Beauty
- Erosion
- Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts, 1974