31 Vendler, Helen 2008 The New York Review of Books 55 10 06/2008 Sea Change, review <p><span class="poetry_excerpt">You have/no rightful way//to live.</span><br /><br />This is the apprehension hovering behind Jorie Graham's new volume of poems,<i> Sea Change</i>. The apprehension springs in part from restless guilt concerning the ongoing American war, undertaken in our name by an elected president and an elected Congress. Any writer must wonder what to say when facing so many lives extirpated or damaged by our preemptive strike, so many conscienceless acts reported day by day. Every poet knows the impossibility of writing public rhetoric as such without personal imagination, but how is one to imagine oneself actively into a distant war as both invader and victim? The fear that 'you have/no rightful way//to live' arises as well for Graham as for any citizen when contemplating our overconsumption of exhaustible natural resources.</p> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=21512