“Inclining My Heart Towards the End”: Experiencing the Planetary Crisis in Jorie Graham’s Sea Change

Abstract

Awareness of the planetary climate crisis impacts our sense of being and time. It undermines the significance of our experience and our actions, posing questions about our agency. The drama of our response to moments when the possibility of a life-destroying catastrophe manifests itself is the focus of much of the American poet Jorie Graham’s (1950–) poetry. The intensity of her oeuvre creates difficulties for the uninitiated reader, partly because of the bleakness of its subject matter, partly because of her stylistic innovations. These include a distinctive use of format, deliberate disorientations, and shifts of focus. At the heart of the article is a close reading of the title poem of Jorie Graham’s 2008 volume, Sea Change (New York: Ecco Press). The aim here is to show the complex profundity of her unfolding of moments of experience and reflection. The article then looks more briefly at Jorie Graham’s most recent poetry in which she has gone beyond “inclining [her] heart towards the end”, to imagining a world after the end. The moving power of Jorie Graham’s writing is cathartic, sometimes curiously consoling, as she turns for a moment to showing how we can value what is still here. The article closes with a brief look at some poetry on comparable themes. Above all, the article aims to show how her poetry deepens our consciousness of consciousness, finding beauty in the tragic necessities of our human condition.

Keywords:

• Jorie Graham
• Sea Change
• ecocriticism
• ecopoetics
• climate crisis

Acknowledgements

At a personal level I must acknowledge, with great warmth, the encouragement, contributions, and critical readings of Liz Burroughs, Gillian Campbell, Gail Fincham, Marcia Leveson, and Diana Vorster (in alphabetical order). More generally, as well, I wish to acknowledge the U3A poetry discussion group, whose weekly affirmation of the importance of poetry is inspiring.

I set out to explore Jorie Graham’s poetry “raw”, by choice, only picking up occasional external sources over time, mainly on the internet. Subsequent to my first writing I was gratified to find that my interpretations were not unlike those of critics with far greater authority than mine. Perhaps the most influential shaper of my understanding was Helen Vendler (2003; 2008). My apology if observations may therefore seem to be unacknowledged.

Notes

1 The names of the poems, in order: “Embodies” (Graham 2008, 6), “Underworld” (12), “Later in Life” (19), “Full Fathom” (30), “Day Off” (40), “Positive Feedback Loop” (42).

2 Interpretations of poems from the /Xam and !Kung, reflecting on the extinction of their clan, 1800s.