Errancy [Hardcover]

Jorie Graham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1997

Poems exploring the theme of sexual, emotional, political, and spiritual desire through the eyes of a poet's characters examine the age in which we live, where dreams are not as easy as they once were.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The epigram that precedes this newest collection of poetry from Jorie Graham points the reader on her way--maybe: "Since in a net I seek to hold the wind." What desires does this connote? This collection by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Graham is indeed a treatise on desire. The distinct persona of each poem embodies some fevered aspect--sexual, political, spiritual--of desire, harking back to the title, Errancy, to suggest that the state of erring might well be our only path toward truth.

The voice is frantic. Poems start mid-sentence; thought interrupts itself, interjecting breathless re-routings and disclaimers. Graham's is a tattered voice, one seeking wholeness in the latter, terrifying part of our complicated century. Included are six guardian angel poems, more like rants against the constantly craving, delusional human mind. Graham's allusion-studded poetry is not to be hurried over but savored, studied like sacred text.

From Library Journal

This collection, Graham's seventh (including 1995's retrospective Dream of the Unified Field, LJ 10/15/95), continues this prominent poet's exploration of the very limits of language and meaning. Her style is as bewitching as ever, but these are perhaps her most difficult poems to date; no longer satisfied with nature or myth or love as her subject, she reinterprets them as the veils of an ever-elusive super-reality: "we are far into the cave of seem," as she says in "Flood." The titles of these poems, with their many occurrences of angels and aubades, almost lead us to expect verses in the manner of Robert Bly, but they are instances of Graham's sleight-of-hand; these poems are a unified journey into the most terrifying conundrums of ontology. Despite the relative accessibility of some poems?e.g., "Willow in Spring Wind," "In the Pasture," "Recovered from the Storm"?Graham's work is apt to be quite challenging for all but the most dedicated readers of poetry; still, Graham is one of the most important living poets, and her control of her craft is undisputed. Recommended.?Graham Christian, Andover-Harvard Theological Lib., Cambridge, Mass.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 109 pages
• Publisher: Ecco; 1st edition (July 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0880015284
• ISBN-13: 978-0880015288
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,819,674 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yes: Stevens and Ashbery, January 6, 2001

By 

Willy Michaels (New Haven, CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Errancy (Paperback)

Yes, Graham's The Errancy is in the spirit of Stevens and Ashbery--perhaps even inheriting their spirits--and what's wrong with that? This is my favorite book from a poet who has transformed American poetry--like Ashbery and Stevens before him--and has become in my mind the single greatest poet in the English language. The book is a chore and a treat--I recommend it very highly!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The traffic jam of the senses, of the self within history, the elements and the swarm., August 23, 2006

By 

Constant Listener (Louisville, KY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Errancy (Paperback)

"After the rain there was traffic behind us like a/ long kiss./ The ramp harrowing its mathematics like a newcomer who likes/ the rules./ Glint and whir of piloting minds, gripped/ steering-wheels..."

So begins "The Scanning," the first long poem in this intricate and hypnotic collection. The traffic becomes a running theme, as do religion ("It was this day or possibly the next that I saw clearly the impossibility of staying in the Church of England," "Jacob waiting and the angel didn't show") plurality ("subaqueous pasturings," "the grammatical weave"), as well as certain words ("glint" is an almost tiring favorite) and less-than-concrete imagery ("[t]he soundless foamed").

This book has fascinated me since I first came across it almost 10 years ago, as a high school junior snooping in a friend's parents' bedroom. I can say honestly and without embarassment that it took me years to get a grip on it. Certain parts are easier to digest than others ("The Guardian Angel of the Little Utopia" and "Willow in Spring Wind: A Showing" are dazzlingly accessible), but it's the larger movement of the book-length sequence that I have come to appreciate as Graham's real specialty. That being said, The Errancy is at once her most cohesive and complex book. Swarm far surpasses it for difficulty but not for pleasure. Never idles; Overlord stands shocked.

Though I don't think the copious Ashbery comparisons are entirely justified, I do know that he and Graham are in a similar vein of difficulty. But I also don't find it necessary to investigate the sweeping philosophical and mythological history and extensive "silent quotation" infused in her words to recognize her powers. She is a difficult writer, true, but one of razor-sharp and majestic vision.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jorie Graham, master of illumination, July 24, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Arlington MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Errancy (Paperback)

In the Middle Ages, nobles employed individuals whose responsibility it was to illuminate manuscripts with images of fantastic color more glorious than the words themselves. Jorie Graham's illuminations of the natural world transform the ordinary (relationships, landscapes, experiences) into poetic, philosophical and theological tapestries of immense depth and complexity. In this book the "Aubade" and "Guardian Angel" series of poems are particularly powerful. All of Graham's poems are worthy of revisiting over and over again if only for the astonishing ways that revelation explodes from the "usual and customary" world throughout her work.