. . .

I suppose if I require others to create new posts then I should be willing to create a new post. There is this book of poems by Jorie Graham. It is called The Dream of the Unified Field. We are reading it for my English 314 class and it is a bit inaccesible. I really like a lot of the poems but they are rather hard to understand and take a little work. Here is one that I really like.

Over and Over Stitch

Late in the season the world digs in, the fat blossoms

hold still for just a moment longer.

Nothing looks satisfied,

but ther is no real reason to move on much further:

this isn't a bad place;

why not pretend

we wished for it?

The bushes have learned to live with their haunches.

The hydrangea is resigned

to its pale and inconclusive utterances.

Towards the end of the season

it is not bad

to have the body. to have experienced joy

as the mere lifting of hunger

is not to have known it

less. The tobacco leaves

don't mind being removed

to the long racks--all uses are astounding

to the used.

There are moments in our lives, which threaded, give us heaven--

noon, for instance, or all the single victories

of gravity, or the kudzu vine,

most delicate of manias,

which has pressed it luck

this far this season.

It shines a gloating green.

Its edges darken with impatience, a kind of wind.

Nothing again will ever be this easy, lives

being snatched up like dropped stitches, the dry stalks of daylilies

marking a stillness we can't keep.

Jorie Graham. Dream of the Unified Field Selected poems 1974-1994. Harper Collins Publishers Inc. Page 16.

I'm not positive of the intended meaning or if there even exists an absolute meaning but when I first read this the beginning of the poem reminded me of those times when I pause and watch the world move without being a part of it. I'm not sure how to explain it but things "hold still for just a moment longer" and "there is no real reason to move on much further." Graham seems to be saying that life is worth living; "To have experienced joy as the mere lifting of hunger is not to have known it less" and "There are moments in our lives which, threaded, give us heaven." I really like that latter line. Anyway, even though I don't really understand her I really like her poems and can find beauty in them.