NONFICTION

From the New World: Poems, 1976–2014

by Jorie Graham
Ecco: HarperCollins. Feb. 2015. 384p. ISBN 9780062315403. $29.99. POETRY
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Pulitzer Prize winner Graham's latest book (after Place) selects poems from 11 of her 16 previous books and adds a few new ones. One can see her style developing from the relatively short lines of her earlier books to the longer, wavelike lines of her later work to her more recent double-string poems, in which the lines on the right meet and greet those on the left. This arrangement works through a clever use of enjambment as the two columns overlap to create three poems: one on the right, one on the left, and another suggested by the connection of the two. The technique works especially well when Graham concerns herself with what in a sense is the real subject of her work: humankind's relationship with the divine: "We call it blossoming—/ the spirit breaks from you and you remain."
VERDICT Although Graham never mentions the word Oversoul here, these difficult language poems are suggestive of transcendentalism in its truest sense. Graham may not visit Walden Pond, but she hangs clothes in her backyard, walks in the woods, and tends her garden (among the subjects of the poems here), using these occasions to mark the place where daily life meets the infinite.
Reviewed by C. Diane Scharper, Towson Univ., MD , Dec 01, 2014
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