Poetry for Students Vol. 10

152 Poetry for Students

Author Biography

Jorie Graham was born in New York City in May

of 1951. When she was just three-months old, her

family moved to Europe, where they settled in the

South of France and then later in Italy. Because her

mother was a well-known painter and her father a

student of history and theology, Graham grew up

with an appreciation for both sacred and secular

concerns. Her interest in painting is reflected in her

many poems about painters, and the frequency with

which her poems deal with historical issues sug-

gests her father’s interests made an equal impact.

Graham began college in Paris at the Sorbonne

where she became involved in the student uprising

dramatized in “The Hiding Place.” Eventually, she

transferred to New York University, where she

earned her bachelor of fine arts degree in 1973. In

1978, she took an MFA in creative writing from the

prestigious Iowa Writer s Workshop at the Univer-

sity of Iowa, where she serves as a faculty member.

Unlike most contemporary poets, Graham

achieved almost immediate success in the literary

world. Early poems appeared in important publi-

cations like The New Yorker, American Poetry Re-

viewand Georgia Review,and Graham began win-

ning awards that helped earn her recognition and

helped get her books published. Her first two

books, Hybrids of Plants and Ghosts(1980) and

Erosion(1983), were funded in part by grants

awarded through Princeton University Press and es-

tablished her as a poet transfixed by the matrix of

language, history, art, and the machinations of the

individual mind. Her next three collections, The

End of Beauty(1987), Region of Unlikeness,(1991)

and Materialism(1993) evinced a break in style to-

ward a more disjunctive and indeterminate line and

stanza, or phrases capable of multiple meanings ex-

pressed in free forms. Poems from each of these

five books were collected in Dream of the Unified

Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994(1995), an ex-

tremely important book for contemporary poetry in

English and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry

in 1996. This book, along with attention from critic

Helen Vendler, established Graham’s reputation as

one of the most important living American writers.

In 1997, she published The Errancy.

Graham’s Swarm(2000) is her most opaque

work to date, and not surprisingly, reviews were

mixed. In addition to her many awards, Graham

was named the Boylston Professor at Harvard Uni-

versity, solidifying her importance to the world of

contemporary poetry.

The Hiding Place

Jorie Graham