The Elegant Variation: JORIE GRAHAM INTERVIEW

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April 02, 2008

JORIE GRAHAM INTERVIEW

As we've said before, we don't know nearly as much about poetry as we'd like, but we do know that Jorie Graham is one of its grand poobahs, so we link to this long and interesting interview in Phillyburbs.com, in which she discusses her newest collection, Sea Change:

DW: What would you suggest to people who are aspiring to be writers and poets? Do you have any advice on how to achieve their goals.

JG: I hate giving advice. But if I take a stab at it today—today I would say: read. Read complete works of poets, to learn what a whole poetic “idiom” is. Also walk, look, smell, taste, touch, listen. Get your body back. Try to make yourself use all your senses every day. There is a vast amount of “information” that is coming at one from sources one doesn’t even know exist. Get outside. Find the strange—not the weird, but the mysterious. We all need to work on staying awake. This is a somnolent era. Growing more so. We need to work hard, pretty much all the time, to achieve moments of presence and wakefulness. Also, avoid living too much in the conceptual intellect at the expense of your body—the “thinky death” Berryman calls it. Undergo poems before you jump to interpretation. Wait till it is absolutely necessary to begin to think “about” the poem, or what it might “mean." Your own or someone else’s.

Posted at 12:42 PM in Poets & Poetry | Permalink

Comments

"We need to work hard, pretty much all the time, to achieve moments of presence and wakefulness."

This is far too close to therapyspeak in its Zententious Noun-ing. I always considered Graham somewhat of a Hairpoet. Note the difference between the humor in Berryman's "thinky death" riff and the humorlessness of Graham's fuzzy dictum, "Find the strange—not the weird, but the mysterious."

Berryman was definitely "weird", lady.

Posted by: Steven Augustine | April 02, 2008 at 03:18 PM

But her basic advice--read and live--is pretty undeniable. One thing I like about being a writer is that no matter how lame or frustrating your day is, you can make the excuse, "Well, I lived, and that's research." It's the best and possibly only way to stomach those trips to the DMV.

Posted by: Cheryl | April 02, 2008 at 03:25 PM

I've been finding myself strangely drawn to poetry lately. My old complete Anne Sexton has been lifting itself off the bookshelf at me and I've been finding a weird comfort for a midwestern boy in her pages. I just bought a collection of contemporary Russian poetry. Garrison Keillor's "Good Poems" is also calling to me. I trust Garrison in almost all things. Is that silly?

Posted by: BradyDale | April 09, 2008 at 04:42 AM

P.S. I have to say that the try to stay awake idea sounds pretty good. Maybe she is spacey, but she's a poet: forgive her. The whole notion of using your senses and just paying attention is advice anyone should follow. It changes your day.

Posted by: BradyDale | April 09, 2008 at 04:44 AM

Thanks for the poetry inclusion, Mark!

Posted by: Kate | November 01, 2009 at 04:24 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

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The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

April 02, 2008

JORIE GRAHAM INTERVIEW

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

April 02, 2008

JORIE GRAHAM INTERVIEW

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism