a review of Jorie Graham’s Overlord

There is something frantic in Jorie Graham’s most recent book, the ominously titled “Overlord”. Her poetry has always had a deep sense of urgency and sprawl, but coupled with a political fervor none too quiet in the face of current events and you have a roar of words as heavy as the burden of the past.

The posture of the book is bleak and desperate at times because she has taken up into her body humanity and history and we are -if we are anything- creatures of great yearning in the face of emptiness. “The aim is to become/ something broken/ that cannot break further.” (Praying (Attempt of Feb 6 `04)). Six of the poems in the book are titled “Praying” (distinguished by dates on which they were “attempted”), but nearly all the poems are prayers, some sort of beseeching beyond the self to god and, at times, to the reader. It is a workbook of remorse and each poem is an exercise in seeing our shame, in calling us to remembrance. “Are we `beyond salvation’? Will you not speak?/ Such a large absence–shall it not compel the largest presence?/ Can we not break the wall?/ And can it please not be a mirror lord?” (Little Exercise).

This intertwining of prayers and politics is no ironic juxtaposition but a carefully reasoned connection between beliefs and wars. The book’s opening quotes are enough to carry the argument, “Belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.” by Franz Kafka and the most chilling of all, from Leo Tolstoy, “Before a war breaks out, it has long begun in the hearts of the people.” It is an amazing book and a far more beautiful and sensible response than the pablum that is “Poets Against the War“.

[2006]