잡종의 세상에서 쓰는 시― 조리 그레이엄

Abstract

This article aims to examine Jorie Graham’s Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts, the first of her more than ten poetry books, to show how she started to come over the “perfected argument” of language. She obtained critical attention in that she developed her own way of responding to “the gap” or “the long sleep of resemblance” between language and what it refers to, the issue of which was raised by many contemporary American poets in the 1960s and early 1970s. Hybrids is the starting point from which Graham continues to develop such eccentric ways as silence, “white spaces,” and “ellipses” to confront what language fails to produce, while every book of hers is intended to find a better access to it. In “THE WAY THINGS WORK” things are considered to be open to one another and give rise to hybrids. The poet is called upon to be keen to the points where nothing essential is allowed and only relations remain. Thus, in “HYBRIDS OF PLANTS AND OF GHOSTS,” the “only perfection” of things is their “weave” and “knot” through “grafting.” In “THE GEESE” the speaker is attracted to the “astonishing delay” of spiders as well as to the “code” of geese. The poet seems to be somewhat away from Language poets in that she still makes an effort to reach something inexpressible while using the limitations of language. Although her next books show “sea change” in words of silence, Hybrids is exemplary enough to point to the “accurate failures [of language]” where Graham’s creative energies are all devoted to the confrontation with the gap between language and experience.