Runaway
New Poems

I have read Jorie Graham for a long time, and this book spoke to me in a way her last few have not. With its use of meter and short lines and then wildly long-line (almost prose poem) cuts back and forth between minimalist and maximalist. Even sometimes within a long tine poem, terse sentences will......more

Runaway is essential to me as a poet. It opens whole areas of consciousness that I haven't seen articulated before! Especially, "WHEREAS AS I HAD NOT YET IN THIS LIFE SEEN": truly transforming in its in/sight! “WHEREAS AS I HAD NOT YET IN THIS LIFE SEEN stillness. Stillness in time. Rich concentrate.......more

I’m supposed to know who Jorie Graham is, but i went into this book completely blind aside from the fact that Helen Vendler, who I also didn’t know, was a major supporter of her work. I’m glad I went into this blind, as it made reading this feel like a discovery. These poems are pretty bleak. The per......more

There was a lot there, some really memorable sections. Think I should have read this one slower, or it would benefit from a second read-- a little experimental and dense, though that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Makes sense that this is so new because the content is very on-the-nose for this year-......more

This is the type of poetry that makes me feel like I’m not smart enough to read poetry. I found it dense and cluttered, with themes that were sometimes extremely difficult to excavate. This was not the style of language and rhythm that I look for in poetry, and I often found myself zoning out midway......more