I wanted to pack a lot into the lyric, but not go beyond its bounds. Some have written that I wanted to expand what the lyric could do. I just want the hugeness of experience-which includes philosophical discursiveness-to move at a rate of speed that kept it (because all within one unity of experience) emotional. Also, often, questions became the way the poems propelled themselves forward It brings the reader in as a listener to a confession[.] A poem is a private story, after all, no matter how apparently public. The reader is always overhearing a confession.
Jorie GrahamIt's very hard to look in a mirror and see anything which resembles what one feels one's self to be. I think that discomfort, that dislocation, disintegration - that raw lack of feeling whole - that dysmorphia - is a very good place, in this moment, to hunt for the kind of experience which really requires the means of poetry to be grasped or felt.
Jorie GrahamA poem is a private story, after all, no matter how apparently public. The reader is always overhearing a confession.
Jorie GrahamWhat poetry can, must, and will always do for us: it complicates us, it doesnโt โsoothe.โ
Jorie GrahamI think I am probably in love with silence, that other world. And that I write, in some way, to negotiate seriously with it.
Jorie GrahamI think I am probably in love with silence, that other world. And that I write, in some way, to negotiate seriously with it . Because there is, of course, always the desire, the hope, that they are not two separate worlds, sound and silence, but that they become each other, that only our hearing fails.
Jorie Graham