Region of Unlikeness

The book starts at the movies, & throughout there are voice-overs & further cinematic detail. But that's hardly what this book is about. Sort of a step down in difficultness from her previous book, The End of Beauty -- but still difficult & also beautiful conceptually, emotionally, musically, in a modern way.... This book also has some of the most important poems of her career, & a lot of very interesting experiments that didn't get into her selected poems. For me, honestly, not a favorite Jorie Graham book, but a good one. At the time of this review, the only other review rated this 4 stars. I just gave it 5 so the average review could be 4 1/2.

The "difficulty" of Jorie Graham: of course she's difficult--why such a prize given to "easy"? Region of Unlikeness reads like an opera --like an opera, the language is dense, powerful, beautiful (though not, in this case, in another language--though some of Graham's critics might say otherwise!--), like the arias of an opera the poems are "staged," they are costumed and choreographed and possess dramatic urges not easily contained in a lyric form. Like James Merrill, like the best of Louise Gluck and the strangest of Jean Valentine, Jorie Graham seems to be negotiating unfriendly turf between lyric, narrative, and "language" poetries--with satisfying, puzzling, entrancing results. Even if someone has convinced you that there is nothing much interesting about Jorie Graham (that "difficult" woman!) give this book a try--it is perhaps the most traditionally (if one dares use that word to apply to Graham!) lyric and narrative of her later, 'experimental' work.