The End of Beauty [Hardcover]

Jorie Graham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1987

A collection of poems by "a poet of large ambitions and reckless music. Ms. Graham writes with a metaphysical flair and emotional power".--New York Times Book Review.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Like an abstract painter, Graham spreads the broad lines of her poems over a vast space: that metaphysical territory constituting the "gorgeous/gap between the mind and the world." It is a mythic dimension no pat labels, such as Classical or Christian, can adequately define, though the poet draws on Genesis , Ovid, and the lives of the saints to set her work in motion. Here the allusions establish wide conceptual frameworks in which the process of thought overshadows the substance. Mind grapples with a force that "has no shape but point of view," tries to comprehend the "emptiness . . . just prior to/ the start of a story." Devotional without being religious, these poems transcend their occasional Deep Image tics (a knowing, disembodied tone and weakness for blue) to reinforce Graham's reputation as a poet of considerable imaginative gifts.Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Annunciation
Breakdancing
Description
Eschatological Prayer
Evening Prayer
Expulsion
Headlights
Imperialism
The Lovers
Noli Me Tangere
Of Forced Sightes And Trusty Ferefulness
On Difficulty
Orpheus And Eurydice
Pieta
Pollock And Canvas
Ravel And Unravel
Room-tone
Self-portrait As Apollo And Daphne
Self-portrait As Both Parties
Self-portrait As Demeter And Persephone
Self-portrait As Hurry And Delay
Self-portrait As The Gesture Between Them
To The Reader
The Veil
Vertigo
What The End Is For (grand Forks, North Dakota)
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 110 pages
• Publisher: Ecco Pr (April 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0880011297
• ISBN-13: 978-0880011297
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,539,759 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ...The Beginning of Disovery, October 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The End of Beauty (American Poetry Series) (Paperback)

In THE END OF BEAUTY, Graham offers us a delicious deconstruction of our mythical histories, our culture, and our art. It puzzles me that few people--even poetry buffs--don't take to her poetry more kindly. For hardly any other contemporary poet--on this side of the Atlantic, anyway--tackles such philosophical, metaphysical, and aesthetic issues with as much vigor as Graham.

Graham's handling of great art and twice-told tales is refreshing in its idiosyncratic usage (and criticism) of postmodern conventions. Reading this book, one cannot fail to see the connections between Graham and Donne, Graham and Derrida, Graham and Ashbery. It's important, I think, especially for readers who fail to grasp many of her ideas, to envision Graham's poetry as part of a much greater discourse between metaphysics and history.

In "Orpheus and Eurydice," Graham retells the story of the mythological lovers, but through the eyes of Eurydice herself, as she vanishes into thin air forever. And in "Breakdancing," she splices together scenes of Saint Teresa's ecstatic prayers in Avila, and breakdancers on a city sidewalk, thus delineating the sense of a multiple reality.

The book will surely leave you with a heightened appreciation for art, as well as art's role in defining and redefining the world.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a world of its own..., June 17, 2001

By 

"hirofantv" (tomorrow) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The End of Beauty (American Poetry Series) (Paperback)

or maybe that should be "a galaxy of its own...." Every poem in this book is enormous -- dense, generally three or four pages long -- pure terrifying brilliance. This is the most terrifying book I've ever read. The poems are all that inelligent. It takes a lot from you to read it, but it gives back much more. She uses her uncompromising, undisputed formal mastery in The End of Beauty to create something necessarily avant-garde, totally unique. Flawless, utterly magnificent in every jerking twist & nuance & flare. The lines explode in myriad different diferent directions like shrapnel, shrapnel, & bring back more scope than you've ever encountered in one place before with sure victory. She knows how to show rather than tell & how to tell when there's the best way.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enchantment!, November 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The End of Beauty (American Poetry Series) (Paperback)

When I first read through this book, my mind was set on the auto-pilot of mere linear sense, trying to get some meaning from the poems. Mistake! At a second reading, I let myself drift along with the embracing flow and only then did I experience the sense of Jorie's words. I thought of how I had experienced James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, and though not comprehending the words or even able to parse them, I began to absorb images and impressions, which became unravelled into a sort of experiencing the reality within the Music of the words. Jorie's language is, indeed, another Music which one ingests much as one experiences an intoxicant dream. Her detractors say that she is an elitist with language, and full of vain puffery. But they do not understand what they're seeing. Jorie's words are a wonderous and beautiful and magical melody!