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An interview with dear Michael Silverblatt: https://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/sho...
Another Pulitzer Prize winner. A highly inaccessible book which summons ghosts of past European battles in many persona poems. The subject matter is too masculine for my tastes. Deft deep-imagery and poetic leaps, though the theme of the book doesn't particularly touch me.
liked this! thought it was accessible enough. sure you gotta work a bit but hey that’s life
On the concept level, I like this book; the various "prayers" and persona poems in the voices of soldiers give the book an ethos I can get behind. Unfortunately, on the execution level, the book leaves me cold. These poems are dense--I'm okay with that--but they have no compression, no sense of craft. Graham does this random indented short line that feels like a gimmick more than it feels like a crafted decision, and the poems drag.
Though I don't pretend to understand every part, I think Graham is brilliant and important. As a reader, I am happy to struggle with her work because it is infinitely rewarding. I love her elongation of time, as well as time's collapse, the thicket of punctuation she creates, and her political and philosophical bents. She takes the idea of relativity to the nth but still has moral and cultural backbone and lyric gravity.
Assume that a pose can be a good thing, and you might make it through this book with a modicum of pleasure.I prefer Jorie's "self" poems to her "other" poems, as in the opening piece, titled "Other" -- ironically.This one maintains greater focus than the subsequent "Sea Change," with (for me) more memorable passages, such as the haunting wrench of a close from "Dawn Day One":"Don't worry where else I am, I am here. Don'tworry if I'm still alive, you are."
Another wonderful collection from Graham. The title references Operation Overlord, i.e., the Allies D-Day invasion of Normandy during World War II. You'll think she's writing about today for much of it.
emotionally and intellectually draining. period. been a long time since a book made me feel like that. i don't love graham--i find her purposefully obtuse at times, but this book isn't that way.
Moving and poignant.
I didn't enjoy this one bit. I guess the second star is in recognition of what it must have taken to write these poems, which were pretty much beyond me.
This is a very difficult book to read for the average reader. She really does push language, maybe even invented her own. I have not fully grasped yet. Great book for studying line and breath though.
People in my workshop said this book was didactic but whatever because I thought it was incredible. Jorie Graham is one of my favorite poets.