Re-reading Jorie Graham: _To 2040_ (2)

 ALL BUT ONE of the poems in To 2040 is either a "rivulet" poem (my own coinage for Graham's poems in very short lines of just a few words, grouped as quatrains, justified on the left) or a justified-on-the-right poem, with greater variety in the length of the lines. Both forms were repeatedly used in Runaway, but now they account for almost the whole collection (eleven "rivulets," nine justified-right). 

Several poems in Runaway were in long-lined quatrains, and there is exactly one poem following that form here: the title poem, "To 2040." Does that mean it was written earlier than most of the others? 

I read the book first in January 2024, not that long ago, but reading it after re-reading its predecessors involved noticing different things and asking different questions. For one thing, I kept trying to discern a pattern to the justified-left and justified-right poems. (Give me a difference, and like many of us I will attempt to attach meaning to it.)

Are the left-justified poems more lyrical, the right-justified more discursive? This works up to a point, as the left-justified ones are swifter, more focused, more colloquial, "sing" more. The right-justified ones tend to looser movement, more detail, more connections, arguing with themselves. No sooner did I construct this pattern, though, than it deconstructed itself. Lyrical moments aplenty in the right-justified poems, plenty of position-taking in the left-justified. The lyrical/discursive difference often holds, but not always.

To 2040 seems set in some near post-collapse future. When two of the left-justified poems ("They Ask Me" and "Dusk in Drought") seemed to be about the disappearance of actual birds and their replacement by mechanical simulations, I wonder if left-justified = future, right-justified = now. But in the right-justified "Fog" we read, "I remember / what it was like  to make coffee in the / mornings. I remember mornings." That would have to be set in a future in which we have lost access to coffee beans, no? And the left-justified "Why" seems set now. So I'm not sure. 

Part of the book's balance of an anxious present and a terrible near-future may imply, though, that it's later than we think, that the future is already here in ways we haven't learned to notice. So any "now" poem could be about the future, any "future" poem would remember now. Draw no hard lines. 

There are moments when hope breaks through. "Why," in which granddaughter Sam touches a bud. The cicadas of "Dawn 2040." The earth healing itself in "Then the Rain." 

Okay. I feel as ready as I could possibly be for Killing Spree.