Erosion (Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets) [Paperback]

Jorie Graham (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

The attempt to find all the stops, to range through the gamut of possibility, makes Ms. Graham a poet of landscape and memory as well as a poet of art. -- The New York Times Book Review

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press; First Edition edition (May 1, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691014051
• ISBN-13: 978-0691014050
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #130,657 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Graham's "eroding" poetry..., March 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Erosion (Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets) (Paperback)

EROSION, Graham's second volume of poems, is quite different from any other she has published. The poems themselves are strung elegantly like a pearl necklace. Each is quite linear in appearance and tone, crafted with clever, audible rhythms and rhymes. Most of the poems focus on a particular artist or saint or philospher--which is refreshing for those of us who bore easily of traditional nature poetry. Taken together, the poems, like many of those in recent book SWARM, deal with the seen & the unseen, the real & the imagined, the actual & the conceptual. EROSION is a bold step outward in American poetry.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jorie Graham's breathtaking first real mastery of poetry, April 7, 2003

By 

I X Key "burningfield" (tomorrow) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Erosion (Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets) (Paperback)

This is where she really mastered poetry, with the infinite elliptical loop & music & self-awareness & endless mysteriousness of Salmon, & in other poems playing, with great precision, with who the speaker is, & doing so much more with the book as a whole. With her first book it was clear that she would be a very special poet, & with this her second she absolutely mastered so many aspects of poetry in such a visionary way that she could confidently proceed from there to the wild avant-garde of her third book, The End of Beauty, & beyond. Reading Erosion, you can tell it's before she broke into the later experimentation she's now famous for. The style is very different. Here the lines are usually shorter; the themes are ambitious ("History" -- including but not focusing on a pitchfork opening slow holes in someone), but not as ambitious as later; the poems are shorter. But I think in poems in Erosion when she says things like "how clean the mind is" while commenting briefly on lemon skins, & elsewhere has a garment closing "from privacy to eternity" one could tell how brilliant she was & how limitless her poetry could be. It's all larger in ambition & scope than her first book. She was progressing already, as at the beginning of a parabolic curve not far out yet from the vertex.

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Illumination of the Body through Poetry, April 16, 2005

By 

Hector Carbajal (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Erosion (Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets) (Paperback)

The trees grow vague,/then are/completely gone,/then stain/this world again as it/evolves/through them.

"At the Long Island Jewish Geriatric Home"

Erosion is the process of a gradual wearing away of something, which translates into many of the themes shaping Jorie Graham's "Erosion," which examines the relation of the body to death, life, faith, memory, spirituality and immortality. Most of the poems, I believe, are connected by the seeming theme of an unfortunate miscarriage experienced by the speaker in all of the poems. There are direct violent images next to subtle expressions that allude to anger, loss and trauma.

For example, "San Sepolcro" announces a protagonist who speaks of a "tragedy" that entails a "forever stillborn." From this point of view, many of the poems unfold to speak about death, nature, spirituality and memory. For instance, the above lines from "At the Long Island Jewish Geriatric Home" allows us to analyze the meaning of the trees as growing "vague," just like developing infants which "grow vague" in terms of not being able to be conceived into full fruition. Then, suddenly these trees/infants are "completely gone," or lost, but remain in memory in having to "stain," or wounding within the context of life, or in other words, in the context of "this world," or world imagined as a womb, which produces the trees/infants.

As a result, the loss of a child remains sown in the majority of the poems, in addition the theme of anger and trauma. "Kimono" and "History" are the most compelling poems that present trauma from loss in terms of motherhood and the loss and regaining of a post-Holocaust memory. Specifically, the speaker of the poems expresses: "I don't see him/my little man/no more than seven/catching his lost stitch of breath." Interpreting the poem, the feeling of loss in terms of "abstract branches" coming from a "whole" that "loosens her stays" provide clues that the speaker ponders the loss of a child only left in memory.

In addition, "History" gives a violent picture of deeds stemming from war that inevitably wipe out innocent "crumbs" that become metaphors for the innocent-relating to Holocaust survivors-imagined as "flowerpots broken" again the torrid wind of war's destruction.

Indeed Graham's poems ponder the darkness of the evil, misfortune, pain, anger and loss that affect the body as it attempts to live in a reality where pleasure, desire and love have a certain role in its organization.

This poetry collection is ideal for courses in Women's Studies, Feminist Studies, Literary Studies, including Graduate Studies in Poetry.