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

1997Jorie Graham

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The Dream of the Unified Field is a selection of Jorie Graham's poems from five collections, including: \ Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts\ , \ Erosion\ , \ The End of Beauty\ , \ Region of Unlikeness\ , and \ Materialism\ ...From \ Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts\ ...The slow overture of rain,each drop breakingwithout breaking intothe next, describesthe unrelenting, syncopatedmind. Not unlikethe hummingbirdsimagining their wingsto be their heart, and swallows believing the horizonto be a line they liftand drop. What is itthey cast for? The poplars,advancing or retreating,lose their statueequally, and yet stand firm,making arrangementsin order to becomeimaginary. The citydraws the mind in streets, and streets compel itfrom their intersectionswhere a littlebelongs to no one. It iswhat is driven throughall stationary portionsof the world, gravity'sstake in things. The leaves,pressed against the dankwindow of Novembersoil, remain unwelcometill transformed, partsof a puzzle unsolvabletill the edge give a bitand soften. See howthen the picture becomes clear,the mind entering the groundmore easily in pieces,and all the richer for it.- Mind, pg. 15-16From \ Erosion\ ...How hard it is for the river here to re-enterthe sea, though it's most beautiful, of course, in the wasteof time where it's almostturned back. Thenit's yokedtrussed. . . . The riverhas been everywhere, imagine, dividing, discerning,cutting deep into the parent rock,scouring and scouringits own bed.Nothing is wholewhere it has been. Nothingremains unsaid.Sometimes I'll come this far from homemerely to dip my fingers in this glittering, archaicsea that renders everythingidentical, fleshwhere mind and bodyblur. The seagull squeak, ill-fittinghinges, the beach is thickwith shells. The tideis always pulsing upward, inland, into the river's rapidargument, pushingwith its insistent tragic waves - the living echo,says my book, of some great storm far out at sea, too farto be recalled by usbut transferredwhole onto this shore by waves, so that erosionis its very face.- Wanting a Child, pg. 35From \ The End of Beauty\ ...1The gesture like a fruit torn from a limb, torn swiftly.2The whole bough bending then springing back as if from sudden sight.3The rip in the fabric where the action begins, the opening of the narrow passage.4The passage along the arc of denouncement once the plot has begun, like a limb, the buds in it cinched and numbered,outside the true story really, outside of improvisation,moving along day by day into the sweet appointment.5But what else could they have done, these two, sick of beginning,revolving in place like a thing seen,dumb, blind, rooted in the eye that's watching,ridden and ridden by that slowest of glances the passage of timestaring and staring until the entrails show.6Every now and then a quick rain for no reason,7a wind moving round all sides, a wind shaking the point of view out like the last bits of rain. . . .8So it was to have freedom she did it but like a secret thought.A thought of him the light couldn't touch.The light beating against it, the light flaying her thought of him, trying to break it.Like a fruit that grows but only in the invisible.The whole world of the given beating against this gardenwhere he walks slowly in the hands of freedomnoiselessly beating his steps against the soil.9But a secret grows, a secret wants to be given away.For a long time it swells and stains its bearer with beauty.It is what we see swelling forth making the shape we know a thing by.The thing inside, the critique of the given.[...]- Self Portrait as the Gesture Between Them [Adam & Eve], pg. 51-52/blockquote>From Region of Unlikeness...Look she said this is not the distancewe wanted to stay at - We wanted to getclose, veryclose. But whatis the way in again? And is ittoo late? She could hear the actionsrushing past - but they are onanother track. And in the silence,or whatever it is that follows,there was still the buzzing: motes, spores,aftereffects and whatnot recalled the morning after.Then the thickness you can't get past called waiting.Then the you, whoever you are, peering down to see if it's done yet.Then just the look on things of being looked-at.Then just the look on things of being seen.- Act III, Sc. 2, pg. 143From Materialism...Watching the river, each handfulof it closing over the next,brown and swollen. Oaklimbs,gnawed at by waterfilm, lifted, relifted, lapped-at by all day inthis dance of non-discovery. All things arepossible. Last year's leaves, coming unstuck from shore,rippling suddenly again with the illusion,and carried, twirling, shiny again and fat,towards the quick throes of another tentativeconclusion, bobbing, circling in little suctions their stiff presenceon the surface compels. Nothing is virtual.The long brown throat of it sucking up from some faraway melt.Expression pouring forth, all content no meaning.The force of it and the thingness of it identical.Spit forth, licked up, snapped where the forceexceeds the weight, clickings, pockets.A long sigh through the land, an exhalation.I let the dog loose in the stretch. Crocusappear in the gassy dank leaves. Manyearth gasses, rot gasses.I take them in, breath at a time, I put mybreath back outonto the scented immaterial. How the invisibletoils. I see it from here and thenI see it from here. Is there a new way of looking -valences and little hooks - inevitabilities, proba-bilities? It flaps and slaps. Is this body the oneI know as me? How private these words? And these? Can yousmell it, brown with little froths at the rot's lips,meanwhiles and meanwhiles thawing then growing soggy then the filament where leaf-matter accrued round apattern, a law, slipping off, precariously, bit by bit,and flicks, and swiftness suddenly more water than not.The nature of goodness the mind exhales.I see myself. I am a widening angle ofand nevertheless and this performance has rapidly -nailing each point and then each next right point, inter-locking, correct, correct again, each rightness snapping loose,floating, hook in the air, swirling, seed-down,quick - the evidence of the visual henceforth - and henceforth, loosening -- Notes on the Reality of the Self, pg. 159-160

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