Jorie Graham's Sense of Self in the Physical and Metaphysical World Ashley Figueiredo
In The Dream of the Unified Field, Jorie Graham has applied the theories of all existence, the fundamental laws of physics, to her poetry. The melding together of philosophy, art, and science is an amazing example of the unity of the world and how everything, whether it is feelings, thoughts, or art, must return to the physical explanations in science. Graham has entitled many of her poems with physics-related terms: “Vertigo”, “Chaos”, “Fission”, “The Dream of the Unified Field”, and “The Complex Mechanism of the Break”, among others. Graham indirectly examines not only many concepts in physics and how they apply to the world, but also directly looks at sense of self, emptiness, chaos, time, and the natural world as they apply to her poetry. In this volume, as well as in later books of poetry, Graham has taken her storytelling to a new level, intertwining numerous tales into one piece of art. According to Helen Vendler, “she made the demanding leap to a practice of connecting together moments widely separated in time and space and occurring on disparate mental levels…the hidden connections among them in the writer’s sensibility (and perhaps in the culture at large) have to be exhumed” (“Mapping the Air,” 227). Not only does Graham work towards the unity of past experiences, but she also tries to recognize her self as a piece of the larger world. This combination makes reading Graham a challenging (and sometimes frustrating), yet enlightening experience for the reader. Throughout The Dream of the Unified Field Graham is coming to terms with herself, and connecting mind, body, and spirit as important to self, yet simultaneously insignificant pieces of the world as a whole. Her search for a sense of self in the world will be returned to later. “The Way Things Work” is an excellent opening to Graham’s volume of selected poems, enlightening us to the physical ideas that will be explored throughout the book. Vendler describes this scene of the exploding and imploding head of the tree as “veering away from the eye into mental categories that attempt to dominate the eye, to bring meaningfulness to seeing” (Vendler, “Indigo, Cyanine, Beryl,” 175). This scene most certainly exemplifies Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle in that we cannot confirm something exists without observing it and then verifying it. And if we cannot do that, then it does not really exist, as neither the birds nor the exploding/imploding head exist for Graham in her confusion. In “Vertigo,” Graham examines the laws of physics further as well as the idea of parts: Parts she thought, free parts, watching the laws
at work, through which desire must course
seeking an ending, seeking a shape. Until the laws of flight and fall
increased.
Graham has set up a scene of a couple standing on the edge of the cliff, watching birds defy the laws of gravity; observing the world from a birds’ eye view and seeing how the edges touch–how each part of the world (sky, grass, sea) is singular and unique, yet serves a role in the beauty and physicality of the world as a whole. “The bird here masses into an identity and then gradually fades into an example or a proof of some higher law of both physics and metaphysics” (Spiegelman 229). The couple can see how much the effect of the bird’s actions relies on these laws. “Vertigo” also transitions the book into a phase of “uncertainty and unpredictability: this is the vertigo felt as one abandons old and predetermined ways in favor of the pull of the unknown beyond the precipice of the new” (Vendler, “The Moment of Excess,” 48). Graham begins to examine further her sense of self- whether or not she really exists – as well as the significance of her own body. The experience of being in the Ganges River discussed in “Imperialism” makes Graham aware of her and her mother’s mortalities, and once she comes to terms with that, there is much more to be examined. In the book Materialism, there is a notable change in Graham’s idea of self, “ultimately suggesting that the self exists only inasmuch as it is composed of material phenomena…asserting that all experience is governed by patterns or laws” (Longenbach 94-5). In essence, Graham resigns herself to the fact that her body is just another being in a physical world which must comply with the laws of physics, the cause and effect by which we all are compelled to live. This is a vital realization which is not a loss of sense of self, but instead a resignation to one’s insignificance in the world. Continuing with the common theme of sense of self, we see Graham’s personal struggle in “The Dream of the Unified Field.” The Unified Field Theory, which Graham is referencing in the title, is “an attempt of physics to unify all the fundamental forces and interactions between elementary particles into a single theoretical framework,” and is otherwise known as the Theory of Everything (TOE), or the “holy grail” for physicists. It aims to reconcile the four fundamental fields of physics: strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, electromagnetic force, and gravitational force (“Unified field theory”). In this poem, Graham unites not only the stories of her delivering her daughter’s leotard and seeing the birds/head in the tree, but that of her childhood, her dance teacher’s life, and her daughter’s dreams. She then begins to feel alone in the world and unsure of her place, as if she senses her insignificance in the world as a whole. See, my pocket is empty now. I let my hand
open and shut in there. I do it again. Two now, skull and
...pocket
with their terrified inhabitants. “At this point, Graham herself is gripped by the overwhelming sense of emptiness: in contrast to the “head” she imagines in the tree, the pocket that held the leotard (her daughter’s “dream”) is empty, and so is her own skull” (Longenbach 96-7). She then returns from her mental diversion and begins to realize her sense of self, not from her history but from her interior: The storm: I close my eyes and,
Standing in it, try to make it mine. An inside
thing. She is in fact “recomposing her self from the material world around her….In the largest sense, Graham is attempting to achieve the “dream of the unified field,” the dream that all material phenomena might be described by a single paradigm” (Longenbach 96-7). She has made an important move towards realization of self minus the material world, finding her place. This loss of sense of self leaves Graham with blanks or gaps, voids longing to be filled by emotional maturity or knowledge she has not yet gained. The poem "Fission," in which the assassination of JFK is announced in the middle of a showing of Kubrick’s Lolita, dramatizes an early experience of this loss of a sense of self. Thomas J. Otten comments on how the poem bears out its title: "Like the electron that splits the atom, the assassin’s bullet breaks the bonds that hold the material – and so for Graham, the affective – world together; dematerialized in the white light of fission, the image on the screen becomes 'vague stuttering of lights,' 'bits of moving zeros,' in an 'infinite virtuality,' 'not particulate'.…Now the space in which vision operates has become an empty gap, one that provokes desperate attempts to bridge it" (193). Otten discusses the gaps or blanks found in Graham’s poetry as being significant of a desire to put something in there, probably emotionally. This adds to the search of self that Graham is going through in this book. The loss of self and sense of loneliness the speaker feels at the end of “Fission” is almost an out-of-body sense, which we observe in numerous instances throughout her poetry. The removal of self leaves a blank, or gap, which needs to be refilled. These blanks can only be filled by coming to a sense of self and learning where one fits into the whole scheme of the world. Time is another physical constraint which Graham attempts to overcome, as she has with space, in The Dream of the Unified Field. Vendler says that “Time itself and the recorder of Time cannot be conceptually separated, in that it is only the recorder who demarcates Time, points out moments worth remembrance. All other moments in the continuum will sink unnoticed. How do we explain what gets recorded? Perhaps attention is random: people might record what they happened to witness or happened to come across” (“Fin-de-Siècle Poetry,” 247). Graham’s poems “History,” “The Phase After History,” and “From the New World” all bring this statement to life in their examination of history, the various points of view from which it is told, and the effect it has on the human race and the world as a whole. If these stories were told differently, the reaction of the reader would be quite different. Point of view, and therefore sense of self (which will aid in defining one’s point of view), are significant. Chaos, another important concept in physics, is brought up in Graham’s poem, aptly entitled “Chaos.” The poem, in which Graham juxtaposes numerous stories, begins with Eve being born from Adam and all beings being created from fire, skin, and chaos. This scene is contrasted with the speaker in an elevator meeting her grandmother in the nursing home, as if by chance. It can be assumed that the grandmother is suffering from Alzheimer’s since Graham says, “We didn’t speak. / We stayed in there a while like that.” The visit feels so lonely, so chaotic, so out of body. They are quietly above the noise of the traffic below, but yet it is unnerving. There is a mention of skins being sewn which circles back to the skin in part 1. The poem then returns to Eve’s creation: “Because the hole that opens in him is the edge of matter, / the very edge,” as if it was the beginning of everything in existence. The idea that Adam, or man himself, was “the very edge” of matter, of all things essentially, is a very bold statement. The Chaos theory, which Graham appears to be exemplifying in this poem, states that chaotic systems are sensitive to initial conditions and must evolve over time so that any given region of the system will at some time overlap with another region of the system. As a result of its sensitivity, the chaotic system appears to be random even though it is in fact well defined (“Chaos Theory”). The universe itself is a chaotic system; an idea from which Graham seems to stem from in this poem, in which she stops space and time and overlaps different narratives. This is a method that is seen throughout her work. In “The Complex Mechanism of the Break,” a newer Graham poem from Never, the physics, as well as the effect on the speaker, of the ocean waves is examined: What is force? My love is forced from me as in retreat
from love. My gaze is forced back into me as it retreats
from thought. Sometimes the whole unraveling activity
for just an instant
pools, all its opposing motions suddenly just pattern on these briefly
lakelike flat – the shore’s upslant unspooling then in only two
dimensions – (close your eyes) –
The question of force – physical as well as the emotional – is impressed upon the reader along with the vision of the ocean creating force and breaking on the land, repeating and retreating into itself. The love, gaze, and thought of the speaker are all retreating as the ocean waves are. It is as though there is a polar system and one is repelled from the other; the land repels the sea, the love repels the love, the thought repels the gaze. In “Soul Says,” from The Dream of the Unified Field, Graham once again mentions the effect the breaking of the wave has on the speaker, “Now then, I said, I go to meet that which I liken to / (even though the wave break and drown me in laughter) / the wave breaking, the wave drowning me in laughter –” as if the wave break is a peaceful, happiness-inducing experience. She also acknowledges the existence of matter and the force of the waves connecting physically with matter: “(There is a form of matter of matter she sang) / (where the hurry is stopped) (and held) (but not extinguished) (no) / (So listen this will soothe you) (if that is what you want).” Being by the sea, especially it seems for Graham, brings a human being closer to nature and a sense of self. Spiegelman says that Graham’s “stringing together of parenthetical phrases, both simultaneous and sequential in their effect, mimics the motion of the waves and also stands in for her greedy imaginative desire to rearrange linear time in order to make everything visible at once. She says straightforwardly: “The mind doesn’t / want it to break – unease where the heart pushes out – the mind / wants only to keep it coming” ” (“Jorie Graham Listening,” 232). Once again, Graham attempts to alter time for her juxtaposing of stories. Graham bases her poetry on the natural world, whether it is a tree, bird, or an ocean wave. “In Materialism, Graham proposes that since all resemblances are drawn from the natural world, everything we are and everything we think must be implicitly reproducible in phenomenal terms.” (Vendler, “Indigo, Cyanine, Beryl,” 175). In addition to this philosophical idea, Graham also relies on the laws of physics to complement her art, as we have observed. According to Calvin Bedient, “Jorie Graham’s vision…trembles with the cosmic gulps and displacements of quantum physics" (276): I am a frequency, current flies through. One has
to ride
the spine
No peace [of mind] [of heart], among the other
frequencies.
(“Ebbtide,” from Never)
The vocabulary that Graham uses in this poem, like the words “frequency” and “current,” give it a physical feel and contribute to her struggle with identification of self. She sees herself as just a frequency rather than a body. She leads the reader to believe that she, the speaker, is not really living, but rather trying to discover what her place in the world is before she can truly be. “The montage and the self-conscious, formal questions are steps toward the overwhelming metaphysical question: Why, if these are the conditions of existence, do we want life? What is Being like? In what words, in what symbols, can it be made intelligible?” (Vendler, “Mapping the Air,” 276). These are very complex questions to address, yet Graham does so with a fluid, artistic ease, leaving her readers with much to ponder and perhaps a new perspective on the state of their own existence. In an interview with Mark Wunderlich, Graham says that “at present, only some forms of advanced science- particle physics for example- allow a young mind to experience the paradox, ambiguity, irrational thought, associative “leaping” any good poem teaches us to think and feel in. It opens those synapses in the brain. It always has. Once open, such minds can think differently in any field” (“The Glorious Thing”). This quotation from Graham herself tells us that she recognizes not only the intricacies of her own poetry, but also how crucial the concepts of physics are to understanding the sense of self and the complexities of the world.
Works Cited Bedient, Calvin. “Toward a Jorie Graham Lexicon.” In Gardner. 275-91. “Chaos Theory.” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 20 November 2006. Wikipedia, the free Gardner, Thomas, ed. Jorie Graham: Essays on the Poetry. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005. Graham, Jorie. “Chaos.” Region of Unlikeness. 1991. The Dream of the Unified Field. Hopewell, NJ: The Ecco Press, 2005. 126-131. -----. “The Complex Mechanism of the Break.” Never. New York: Ecco Press, 2002. -----. “The Dream of the Unified Field.” Materialism. 1993. The Dream of the Unified Field. Hopewell, NJ: The Ecco Press, 2005. 176-82. -----. “Imperialism.” The End of Beauty. 1987. The Dream of the Unified Field. Hopewell, NJ: The Ecco Press, 2005. 90-4. -----. Interview with Mark Wunderlich. “The Glorious Thing: Jorie Graham and Mark Wunderlich in Conversation.” The Academy of American Poets. 2006. <http://www.poets. org/printmedia.php/prmMediaID/15774>. -----. “Soul Says.” Region of Unlikeness. 1991. The Dream of the Unified Field. Hopewell, NJ: The Ecco Press, 2005. 156. -----. “Vertigo.” The End of Beauty. 1987. The Dream of the Unified Field. Hopewell,NJ: The Ecco Press, 2005. 64-5. -----. “The Way Things Work.” Hybrids of Plants and Ghosts. 1980. The Dream of the Unified Field. Hopewell, NJ: The Ecco Press, 2005. 3. Longenbach, James. “Jorie Graham’s Big Hunger.” 1997. In Gardner. 82-101. Otten, Thomas J. “Jorie Graham’s _____s.” 2003. In Gardner. 185-205. Spiegelman, Willard. “Jorie Graham Listening.” In Gardner. 219-37. “Unified Field Theory.” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 11 November 2006. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_unified_field_theory> Vendler, Helen. “Fin-de-Siècle Poetry: Jorie Graham.” Soul Says: On Recent Poetry. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995. 244-56. -----. “Indigo, Cyanine, Beryl: Review of Never.” 2003. In Gardner. 170-84. -----. “Jorie Graham: The Moment of Excess.” 1995. In Gardner. 42-59. -----. “Mapping the Air: Adrienne Rich and Jorie Graham.” Soul Says: On Recent Poetry. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995. 212-34. “Werner Heisenberg & The Uncertainty Principle.” AIP Center for History of Physics. 2006. American Institute of Physics, 1998-2006. <http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/>
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