Re-reading Jorie Graham: _The Errancy_ (2)

 "THE GUARDIAN ANGEL of Self-Knowledge" can serve as an example of the sense of estrangement that runs through the book. The speaker seems to be passing through a campus, noticing the students, "these desperate, aimless ones in twos along the built-up paths, / in ones in corridors, these ones so skillfully grouped up / in liquid clutches of impermanence [...]." A few lines later, the speaker notices "the phone-booth where one's crying / softly now / into the glistening receiver [...]." 

"Untitled Two" likewise seems to take place on a campus, the speaker noticing a group of four girls talking among themselves, perhaps dissecting an absent fifth: "and then a hard remark, slammed in, a lowering again / of tone, quick chitter from the group, low twist of tone / from in the midst [...]'" This passage convinced me Graham could have written an excellent novel, but it also deepend the collection's absence of comfort.

Then there are the seven aubades. The traditional aubade is set at dawn (aube, in French) and involves a lover addressing the beloved as they prepare to part. Graham seems alone in her aubades and not in any kind of afterglow. "Oblivion Aubade" begins with these lines: "What dimensions must the defeat acquire, the homecoming, / scrawling all over my skin, my sickly peering in, / for me to finally hear the laughter?" In "Red Umbrella Aubade," the speaker is out on the streets as dawn arrives:

On my way home I hear, somewhere near dawn,

forged and stamped onto the high air,

                            one bloodshot

cardinal-call--bejangled clarity gripping form--

casting its pulverized acrylic in-

                           terrogation

out -- plain out --

first once like a dropped red stitch

and then again like the start of

                a silky argument

unfolding....

The poem ends with "an aftertaste, as of ashes, in my mouth, / from listening." One recalls Romeo and Juliet disputing whether the bird they just heard was a lark or a nightingale. They were spared the cardinal's "pulverized acrylic interrogation."

And then there are the "manteau" poems. They need their own post.