Fast

by Jorie Graham

Overview

A New York Times Notable Book

An urgent, sweeping collection of poetry from Pulitzer Prize winner Jorie Graham

“A fascinating mosaic that explores what it means to live and die at a time when technology is redefining our existence......moving...[an] important book.” (The Washington Post)

In her her most exhilarating, personal, and formally inventive collection to date Jorie Graham explores the limits of the human and the uneasy seductions of the post-human.

Conjuring an array of voices and perspectives—from bots to the holy shroud, to the ocean floor, to a medium transmitting from beyond the grave—these poems give urgent form to the ever-increasing pace of transformation of our planet and ourselves. As it navigates cyber life; 3D printed “life”; life after death; and biologically, chemically, and electronically modified life, Fast lights up the border of our new condition as individuals and as a species on the brink.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062663498
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/03/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	7.30(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Jorie Graham is the author of fourteen collections of poems. She has been widely translated and has been the recipient of numerous awards, among them the Pulitzer Prize, the Forward Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and the International Nonino Prize. She lives in Massachusetts and teaches at Harvard University.

Editorial Reviews

Fast is a great book about the nature of social life in the 21st century, a book in which past and future unfold in “every cell’’ across the vast space of a few words.” — The New York Times Book Review

“A fascinating mosaic that explores what it means to live and die at a time when technology is redefining our existence......moving...[an] important book.” — Washington Post

“Graham’s lush, pulsing lyrics sweep across unusually wide pages in her signature style of reach and embrace, her language surging with passion yet shaped with precision. Each of Graham’s poems is a daring voyage...leaving readers exhilarated and transformed.” — Booklist (starred review)

“In poems both complicated and inventive, [Graham] constructs and deconstructs her core ideas through multilayered words and phrasings, compelling readers to feel what it’s like to be human in a posthuman world...stunning.” — Library Journal (starred review)

From the Publisher

A fascinating mosaic that explores what it means to live and die at a time when technology is redefining our existence......moving...[an] important book.

Washington Post

Graham’s lush, pulsing lyrics sweep across unusually wide pages in her signature style of reach and embrace, her language surging with passion yet shaped with precision. Each of Graham’s poems is a daring voyage...leaving readers exhilarated and transformed.

Booklist (starred review)

A fascinating mosaic that explores what it means to live and die at a time when technology is redefining our existence......moving...[an] important book.

Washington Post

In this first volume since her career-spanning selected poems (From the New World, published in 2015), Graham writes an autopsy of self and nation in the face of overwhelming loss. These are poems created while parents are dying and the poet herself is undergoing cancer treatment against the backdrop of ecological crisis and several American wars…Even when her pages risk overcrowding…Graham counterbalances the pace, often with one- or two-word sentences. They're like many essential air bubbles, allowing us to pause and fully appreciate these virtuoso surfaces…Graham refuses to let herself or her readers be "torchful of forgetfulness," reminding us in her shape-shifting poetry that cancer, racial and class warfare, immigrant phobia and nationalism infect us all in dissimilar yet interconnected ways. Fast is a great book about the nature of social life in the 21st century, a book in which past and future unfold in "every cell" across the vast space of a few words…Jorie Graham has studied grief and tracked its symptoms to their sources. A body can indeed tell the story of the world.

The New York Times Book Review - Adam Fitzgerald

Fast is a great book about the nature of social life in the 21st century, a book in which past and future unfold in “every cell’’ across the vast space of a few words.

The New York Times Book Review