Carcanet Press - The Taken-Down God

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Author
Contents
Awards
Reviews

Acclaimed as one of America’s most passionate and intelligent innovators, Jorie Graham writes poems of luminous formal beauty. Here she selects from the five books that preceded her 2012 Forward Prize-winning collection P L A C E, presenting European readers with a coherent and compelling body of work. The book complements her Pulitzer Prize-winning The Dream of the Unified Field (1996), which selected work from her first five books. Jorie Graham’s poems address a planet spinning towards an unknowable future. They challenge us to inhabit a more responsive and responsible place in language and the world. Her poetry is as urgent as it is essential.

from The Errancy (1997)

The Guardian Angel of the Little Utopia

Untitled One

The Guardian Angel of Self-Knowledge

The Scanning

Thinking

That Greater Than Which Nothing

Studies in Secrecy

Le Manteau de Pascal

Recovered from the Storm

Of the Ever-Changing Agitation in the Air

from Swarm (2000)
from The Reformation Journal (1)

The Veil

Underneath (Sibylline)

Middle Distance

Prayer (after Hölderlin)

Underneath (Calypso)

Two Days

The Swarm

from The Reformation Journal (2)

Underneath (13)

from Never (2002)

Prayer

In/Silence

Woods

Dusk Shore Prayer

Gulls

Ebbtide

Evolution [One’s nakedness is very slow]

Evolution [How old are you?]

from Overlord (2005)

Other

Dawn Day One

Soldatenfriedhof

Upon Emergence

Little Exercise

Praying (Attempt of May 9 ’03)

Praying (Attempt of June 14 ’03)

Spoken from the Hedgerows

Impressionism

Praying (Attempt of April 19 ’04)

from Sea Change (2008)

Sea Change

Embodies

Later in Life

Nearing Dawn

Day Off

Root End

The Violinist at the Window, 1918

Futures

Undated Lullaby

No Long Way Round

Notes

Jorie Graham was born in New York City in 1950, the daughter of a journalist and a sculptor. She was raised in Rome, Italy and educated in French schools. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris before attending New York University as an undergraduate, where she studied filmmaking. She received ... read more

Awards won by Jorie Graham Winner, 2012 Forward Prize for Best Collection (PLACE) Winner, 2017 Wallace Stevens Award for Lifetime Achievement Commended, 2017 Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
(Fast) Winner, 1996 Pulitzer Prize
(The Dream of the Unified Field) Short-listed, 2012 T S Eliot Prize () Short-listed, 2012 Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection ()

Praise for Jorie Graham 'Even when these poems are at their darkest and most purposefully incoherent in terms of voice and tone, there remains a trace of language's ability to seek out, transmit and make visible the impact of the world on the self for others to experience.'
Oxonian Review

'The reason that poets are addicted to poetry and they write it for a lifetime, is because a poem will permit you to go through life and have an experience you can't have by any other means.'
Jorie Graham talking to Ian McMillan on Radio 3's The Verb, 15 December 2017

'Another striking book from Jorie Graham, and one that frequently reaches fever-pitch in its frantic explosion of the lyric mode. Graham's themes in these poems -ranging through sickness, death and environmental crises -would rattle any reader, and her long lines, clamouring fragments and sprawling chorus of voices increase this effect to a dramatic extent. These are urgent, stressed and stressful poems that produce a panicked motion-sickness as you spiral through them. This is an important, desperate and, at times, frightening, book that truly captures the tone of contemporary times.'
The Poetry School Books of the Year 2017

'In FAST, [Graham's] subject is mortality - her own (she was diagnosed with cancer five years ago), her parents', that of intellect and culture (in dementia, in digital overwhelm), that of the planet. It is a collection of sensual poems so urgent that, by the end, they have abandoned traditional beginnings and are physically bunched up on the right-hand side of the page. And through it all, an unwavering, serious belief in the power of poetry, a repeatedly inhabited rejection of Auden's assertion that poetry makes nothing happen.'
The Guardian

'Fast might immerse us in monstrous acts of environmental and political violence, our obsession with progress, money, and our own individualistic, virtual worlds, but what still succeeds is the wish to live on. Perhaps if we were to listen to that wish we might, amongst all the acceleration, stop and think again.'
- The London Magazine

'We should be grateful to Jorie Graham for her own heroics of perception, even if they show up our ordinary insight. If we can't see, with Graham, "the spots where the birds must eventually land", at least we know now where we should be looking.'
Gwyneth Lewis, Times Literary Supplement. 'Graham's best book in at least a decade.'
Publishers Weekly 'The poems in Jorie Graham's Sea Change might look unapproachable but they are models of clarity and purity.'
Nicola Smyth, 'Books of the Year', the Independent, 28 December 2008
'There are erotic poems, elegiac poems, and there are dauntingly difficult, allusive and even impenetrable poems. Throughout there is a powerful, engaging intelligence and an affirming lyric grace.'
Stephen Matterson on The Errancy, in Poetry Ireland Review, vol. 62

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The Taken-Down God Selected Poems 1997-2008 Jorie Graham RRP: GBP 14.95 Discount: 10% You Save: GBP 1.50 Price: GBP 13.45 Available Paperback ISBN: 978 1 847771 94 0 Categories: 20th Century, 21st Century, American, Women Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Published: May 2013 216 x 135 x 8 mm 144 pages Publisher: Carcanet Press Description Author Contents Awards Reviews Acclaimed as one of America’s most passionate and intelligent innovators, Jorie Graham writes poems of luminous formal beauty. Here she selects from the five books that preceded her 2012 Forward Prize-winning collection P L A C E, presenting European readers with a coherent and compelling body of work. The book complements her Pulitzer Prize-winning The Dream of the Unified Field (1996), which selected work from her first five books. Jorie Graham’s poems address a planet spinning towards an unknowable future. They challenge us to inhabit a more responsive and responsible place in language and the world. Her poetry is as urgent as it is essential. *from The Errancy* (1997) The Guardian Angel of the Little Utopia Untitled One The Guardian Angel of Self-Knowledge The Scanning Thinking That Greater Than Which Nothing Studies in Secrecy Le Manteau de Pascal Recovered from the Storm Of the Ever-Changing Agitation in the Air from Swarm (2000) from The Reformation Journal (1) The Veil Underneath (Sibylline) Middle Distance Prayer (after Hölderlin) Underneath (Calypso) Two Days The Swarm from The Reformation Journal (2) Underneath (13) from Never (2002) Prayer In/Silence Woods Dusk Shore Prayer Gulls Ebbtide Evolution [One’s nakedness is very slow] Evolution [How old are you?] from Overlord (2005) Other Dawn Day One Soldatenfriedhof Upon Emergence Little Exercise Praying (Attempt of May 9 ’03) Praying (Attempt of June 14 ’03) Spoken from the Hedgerows Impressionism Praying (Attempt of April 19 ’04) from Sea Change (2008)** Sea Change Embodies Later in Life Nearing Dawn Day Off Root End The Violinist at the Window, 1918 Futures Undated Lullaby No Long Way Round Notes Jorie Graham was born in New York City in 1950, the daughter of a journalist and a sculptor. She was raised in Rome, Italy and educated in French schools. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris before attending New York University as an undergraduate, where she studied filmmaking. She received ... read more Awards won by Jorie Graham Winner, 2012 Forward Prize for Best Collection (PLACE) Winner, 2017 Wallace Stevens Award for Lifetime Achievement Commended, 2017 Poetry Book Society Recommendation. (Fast) Winner, 1996 Pulitzer Prize (The Dream of the Unified Field) Short-listed, 2012 T S Eliot Prize () Short-listed, 2012 Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection () Praise for Jorie Graham 'Even when these poems are at their darkest and most purposefully incoherent in terms of voice and tone, there remains a trace of language's ability to seek out, transmit and make visible the impact of the world on the self for others to experience.' Oxonian Review 'The reason that poets are addicted to poetry and they write it for a lifetime, is because a poem will permit you to go through life and have an experience you can't have by any other means.' Jorie Graham talking to Ian McMillan on Radio 3's The Verb, 15 December 2017 'Another striking book from Jorie Graham, and one that frequently reaches fever-pitch in its frantic explosion of the lyric mode. Graham's themes in these poems -ranging through sickness, death and environmental crises -would rattle any reader, and her long lines, clamouring fragments and sprawling chorus of voices increase this effect to a dramatic extent. These are urgent, stressed and stressful poems that produce a panicked motion-sickness as you spiral through them. This is an important, desperate and, at times, frightening, book that truly captures the tone of contemporary times.' The Poetry School Books of the Year 2017 'In FAST, [Graham's] subject is mortality - her own (she was diagnosed with cancer five years ago), her parents', that of intellect and culture (in dementia, in digital overwhelm), that of the planet. It is a collection of sensual poems so urgent that, by the end, they have abandoned traditional beginnings and are physically bunched up on the right-hand side of the page. And through it all, an unwavering, serious belief in the power of poetry, a repeatedly inhabited rejection of Auden's assertion that poetry makes nothing happen.' The Guardian 'Fast might immerse us in monstrous acts of environmental and political violence, our obsession with progress, money, and our own individualistic, virtual worlds, but what still succeeds is the wish to live on. Perhaps if we were to listen to that wish we might, amongst all the acceleration, stop and think again.' - The London Magazine 'We should be grateful to Jorie Graham for her own heroics of perception, even if they show up our ordinary insight. If we can't see, with Graham, "the spots where the birds must eventually land", at least we know now where we should be looking.' Gwyneth Lewis, Times Literary Supplement. 'Graham's best book in at least a decade.' Publishers Weekly 'The poems in Jorie Graham's Sea Change might look unapproachable but they are models of clarity and purity.' *Nicola Smyth, 'Books of the Year', the Independent, 28 December 2008* 'There are erotic poems, elegiac poems, and there are dauntingly difficult, allusive and even impenetrable poems. Throughout there is a powerful, engaging intelligence and an affirming lyric grace.' *Stephen Matterson on The Errancy, in Poetry Ireland Review, vol. 62*	Share this... 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The Taken-Down God

Selected Poems 1997-2008

Jorie Graham