Place: New Poems [9780062190642]

Overview

“Graham’s poetry is among the most sensuously embodied and imaginative writing we have.” —New York Times

A startlingly original collection of poems from Pulitzer Prize winner Jorie Graham

An extraordinary American artist whom The New Yorker calls “a mesmerizing voice,” Graham has been placed in the poetic lineage of such masters as T.S. Eliot and John Ashbery.

In Place, Graham explores the ways in which our imagination, intuition, and experience aid us in navigating a world moving towards its own annihilation and a political reality where the human person and its dignity are increasingly disposable. These poems seek out sites of wakeful resistance and achieved presence. From the natural world to human sensation, they investigate the reality and irreducible originality of our “inner landscapes.” They test the unstable “congeries” of the self, its ever-shifting vitality, and the creative tensions that inevitably exist within and between its interior and exterior life-particularly as these are shaped by language. 

In an era where distrust and evasion of human experience and its attendant accountability are pervasive, Place calls us to re-inhabit and make full use of—and even rejoice in—a more responsive and responsible place of the human in the world.