The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994

Starting with her splendid beginnings as a voice so uniquely visual that it could only later obsess her, The Dream begins with an explanation of The Way Things Work and descends (travels sideways and expands like interstellar gas) into the full-throttle Graham of the middle period, long lines, huge gusts of philosophy and sight, and of course her ever-evolving attempts to cut into cross-sections of the silences air holds and... Read Full Review

After reading and re-reading this collection, the first thought that crossed my mind was, "I want something magnificent to happen to me today!" I felt myself dissolving from today and re-emerging into a mythical tomorrow, where words and phrases would be coins of the realm. Graham is the owner magic; spellbinding and lucid and yet swirling together the elements of The Actual and The Figurative; hybrids of each other, till... Read Full Review

With The Dream of the Unified Field, Jorie Graham lays bare her mission to lift the entire flowing river of poetry like the Nile or a useful toothpick & change its course to somewhere no one but she could have dreamed, but where it needed to go. From her early, formative poetry that showed a remarkable depth, clarity, & potential to the absolute mastery of quasi-formalist poetry to her exploding into true avant-garde... Read Full Review

Jorie Graham is a poet who is not afraid to tackle big ideas and themes. One of the most disconcerting trends in poems I've read in literary magazines these days is this shying away from intellectualism. So many poems are "look what many epiphanies I can unearth just from my small private world." If you have a violent reaction against these kinds of poems, Jorie Graham's poetry is that antidote you have been searching. She... Read Full Review