Structure & Surprise

In “Why Is the Great American Poem So Hard to Write?,” Jason Guriel, among other things, critiques Jorie Graham’s Sea Change: Poems for not including any poems–that is, singular, distinctive poems.  Guriel’s reasonsing for this assessment seems to be largely formal–he mainly critiques Graham’s use of an irregular form involving both very long and very short lines.  However, I suggest in my response to Guriel that if one pays attention to the structures of Graham’s poems–to the ways they turn–one might arrive at a very different understanding and assessment of Graham’s work.

Read the initial review (and my full response posted as a comment) here.

Read my published (and edited–by the editors at Poetry) letter here, and Guriel’s response to my letter here.

Now read Graham’s Sea Change, and make your own assessments–