Killing Spree by Jorie Graham

The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jorie Graham has been writing about small things for over 50 years. Her debut 1980 collection Hybrids of Plants and Ghosts contained cerebral meditations on spiders, the migration patterns of geese, and Tennessee wildflowers. Graham takes microscopic lenses on her mother’s sewing box, the morning glories blooming at dusk, and the mysterious layers of an artichoke. Her voice has developed as one that is precise, philosophical and surgical. In those 50 years, that has certainly garnered its laurels. She replaced Seamus Heaney as the Boylston Professor at Harvard; she is now one of the most lauded post-war poets in America.

Her new collection Killing Spree, an investigation into writing through crisis, is decidedly less small and quiet. The book’s blurb boasts that these poems “seek… to guide us through the ecological, political and technological conditions that threaten our modern world.” This primes the reader to expect capital-P Political Poetry, a domain that is almost sure to elicit groans from those on every side of the political aisle. The capital-P Political Poet is often seen as obstinate and self-assured, to the point of dogmatism.

But Graham here, if anything, is the opposite. The collection opens with “the world // didn’t change much / at first. At / first it / didn’t change / much, at first I / didn’t – I don’t – / change much.” This voice is self-reflexive, self-correcting. These repetitive, syntactical loops catch the reader off guard. It is a voice tentative to say the right thing, but even more desperate to say something at all. The speaker notices: “who // can still speak from their cage? It’s been quiet for a while now.”

Graham has been publishing poetry since 1980

Graham has been publishing prize-winning poetry since 1980Credit: Dino Ignani 

At its core, this is a book about the apocalypse (similarly to her last collection 2040), which, as far as the writer knows, may have arrived yesterday, or bring a worse that is still yet to come. No specific conflict is named in the text, but there are clear echoes: of the conflict in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, the climate crisis. In many ways, the anonymity of these dystopias ups the ante on the panic. They could be anywhere. The killing spree is moving so quickly that today’s conflict is tomorrow’s irrelevance, while the carnage itself continues.

Her new collection Killing Spree, an investigation into writing through crisis, is decidedly less small and quiet. The book’s blurb boasts that these poems “seek… to guide us through the ecological, political and technological conditions that threaten our modern world.” This primes the reader to expect capital-P Political Poetry, a domain that is almost sure to elicit groans from those on every side of the political aisle. The capital-P Political Poet is often seen as obstinate and self-assured, to the point of dogmatism.

But Graham here, if anything, is the opposite. The collection opens with “the world // didn’t change much / at first. At / first it / didn’t change / much, at first I / didn’t – I don’t – / change much.” This voice is self-reflexive, self-correcting. These repetitive, syntactical loops catch the reader off guard. It is a voice tentative to say the right thing, but even more desperate to say something at all. The speaker notices: “who // can still speak from their cage? It’s been quiet for a while now.”

Graham has been publishing poetry since 1980

Graham has been publishing prize-winning poetry since 1980Credit: Dino Ignani 

At its core, this is a book about the apocalypse (similarly to her last collection 2040), which, as far as the writer knows, may have arrived yesterday, or bring a worse that is still yet to come. No specific conflict is named in the text, but there are clear echoes: of the conflict in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, the climate crisis. In many ways, the anonymity of these dystopias ups the ante on the panic. They could be anywhere. The killing spree is moving so quickly that today’s conflict is tomorrow’s irrelevance, while the carnage itself continues.

The collection is a breath of fresh air in comparison to today’s lyric poetry, where experiences and emotions often take primacy over everything else. Graham’s “I”, however, is far more preoccupied with the outside than the inside. In Killing Spree, Graham adopts the stance of a frantic soothsayer, who is constantly interrupting themselves. Phrases are cut in half by commas. Words themselves are cut by linebreaks: “re- / directing” “ex - / hale” “ en - counter.”

Most notable are Graham’s liberal usages of em dashes, which will always be associated with Emily Dickinson. Yet Graham also channels Dickinson in other, less immediately visible ways: both their work features cryptic, seductive, and menacing landscapes that never come into full focus. In Killing Spree, “A door in the tree / opens.” A sun comes in “veins of red.” There are roses and picket fences, but dead bodies and burning buildings as well. Bullets whirr like hummingbirds, and drones buzz in the trees.

If there’s any dominant mood to the collection, it’s acceleration. Graham writes, in reference to a train attempting to leave a warzone, “it’s speed which is carrying us now / the vehicle is an illusion.” This speed to the point of spiralling out of control is perhaps the zeitgeist of our times. Killing Spree is a bold collection that, unlike much poetry published today, can keep up with the pace. SF

Sarah Fletcher is the author of the collection Plus Ultra. Killing Spree is published by Carcanet at £12.99. To order your copy for £10.99, call 0330 173 0523 or visit Telegraph Books