Jorie Graham, _Fast_

THE OFFICIAL PUBLICATION date of Fast was May 2, 2017, coincidentally my birthday. I bought  it within a few weeks of that, but only read it a month ago.

I find myself wondering what I would have thought about the book had I read as soon as I bought it, because several poems are about the decline and death of Graham's father and several more are about her own cancer treatments, and, as it happens, my own father died last July and last December I was myself diagnosed with cancer (a very treatable kind). The book made a deep impression on me, but having read the book in the circumstances I did, I'm not sure whether the depth of that impression has to do with the poems themselves or with their being concerned with situations I have freshly experienced myself.

However one wants to account for it, I thought the book was superb. It affected me more than any Graham volume since Region of Unlikeness, I would say.  In some of her books on this side of the millennium--I'm thinking of Sea Change and Overlord--Graham seemed to be trying too assiduously to be the major American poet just about anyone would concede she is, as if she wanted to live up to her reputation but was finding that living up to it was a pain in the tush. This one, though, for me, is undeniably a great book by a major American poet, the kind that had me muttering "goddamn, that's good" every other page.

The jacket flap calls Fast "her most exhilarating, personal, and formally inventive [collection] to date." Maybe that's it, but I dunno. I wouldn't call it exhilarating, I know that. I felt like she was engraving something on my bones. Most personal? It is personal, but so was The Errancy, wasn't it?

Most formally inventive...yes, there is some striking technique going on. I was noticing a lot of what I think of as a J. H. Prynne device, several long lines flush left, then a few much shorter lines placed well to the right; someone needs to analyze what this does, because it is certainly doing something, and the weird burst of speed it imparts delivers an unusual kick. Graham is really good at it. But is she at her most formally inventive here? I wouldn't sign off on that, given what we've seen from her already.

So, I'm not sure why I feel this way, and it might just be me, but I think this is the real thing, a classic.