Re-reading Jorie Graham: _Overlord_ (1)

SEVERAL GRAHAM COLLECTIONS that I thought worthy but not compelling when I first read them--The Errancy, Never, and now Overlord--seem much more compelling to me now, on a second reading many years later. Reading them all together probably accounts for some of the difference, as it's easier to see both the continuities and changes in direction. Then, too, I have read a lot of poetry of all sorts since 2005, when Overlord was published, and I imagine that makes a difference. Or so I can hope.

Let's notice the dust jacket again. The intriguingly named Fearn Cutler de Vicq again served as designer, and she used the same template employed for Never: uniform background color (black rather than white this time), book title and Graham's name all caps in a contrasting color, descriptors of the book's content ("poems") and Graham's standing ("from the pulitzer prize winner") in a smaller font size. Centered among the words, a photograph of a painting/collage; then, centered on the back, in the same spot and in the same dimensions, a photograph of Graham, with no other copy save the UPC code.

Both the painting/collage and  the photograph are by Peter Sacks, whom Graham had married in 2000. 

Does the repeated jacket design suggest a sort of continuity between Never and Overlord? I have the feeling it does, but it would be hard to pin down. It reminds me of the similar jackets for Yeats's The Tower and The Winding Stair, both designed by Sturge Moore. Those two books seem to share origins, not so much to seem like a "part one" and a "part two" as to be like siblings, á la Radiohead's Kid A and Amnesiac. 

The dedication too is a variation on previous dedications: "This book is dedicated to the life of my parents, / Bill and Beverly, / and to the life of my daughter, / Emily." Graham has already dedicated books  to her parents and (more than once) to her daughter, but what difference does it make to dedicate a book to "the life of" a person, rather than simply to the person?

One of the poems titled "Praying" (the one subtitled "Attempt of Feb 6 '04" and "For Emily") may help. "I search for gratitude," Graham declares, a few lines later landing on the possibility, "That my loved ones exist. That they are right this / second still in / life." This move doesn't quite seem enough--"No gratitude yet," Graham observes on  the next page--but maybe the idea behind the dedication is that the book in  honor of their being not simply her loved ones but of their being, "right this / second," still alive.