[To] The Last [Be] Human
[To] The Last [Be] Human
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Overview
[To] The Last [Be] Human collects four extraordinary poetry books—Sea Change, Place, Fast, and Runaway—by Pulitzer Prize winner Jorie Graham.
From the introduction by Robert Macfarlane:
The earliest of the poems in this tetralogy were written at 373 parts per million of atmospheric CO2, and the most recent at 414 parts per million; that is to say, in the old calendar, 2002 and 2020 respectively. The body of work gathered here stands as an extraordinary lyric record of those eighteen calamitous years: a glittering, teeming Anthropocene journal, written from within the New Climatic Regime (as Bruno Latour names the present), rife with hope and raw with loss, lush and sparse, hard to parse and hugely powerful to experience … Graham’s poems are turned to face our planet’s deep-time future, and their shadows are cast by the long light of the will-have-been. But they are made of more durable materials than granite and concrete, they are very far from passive, and their tasks are of record as well as warning: to preserve what it has felt like to be a human in these accelerated years when ‘the future / takes shape / too quickly,’ when we are entering ‘a time / beyond belief.’ They know, these poems, and what they tell is precise to their form…. Sometimes they are made of ragged, hurting, hurtling, and body-fleeing language; other times they celebrate the sheer, shocking, heart-stopping gift of the given world, seeing light, tree, sea, skin, and star as a ‘whirling robe humming with firstness,’ there to ‘greet you if you eye-up.’
I know not to mistake the pleasures of this poetry for presentist consolation; the situation has moved far beyond that: ‘Wind would be nice but / it’s only us shaking.’ … To read these four twenty-first-century books together in a single volume is to experience vastly complex patterns forming and reforming in mind, eye, and ear. These poems sing within themselves, between one another, and across collections, and the song that joins them all is uttered simply in the first lines of the last poem of the last book:
The earth said
remember me.
The earth said
don’t let go,
said it one day
when I was
accidentally
listening…
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781619322592 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Copper Canyon Press |
Publication date: | 09/06/2022 |
Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
Format: | eBook |
File size: | 710 KB |
About the Author
Jorie Graham is the author of a dozen collections of poetry, including The Dream of the Unified Field, which won the Pulitzer Prize. She divides her time between western France and Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she teaches at Harvard University.
Robert Macfarlane is the author of prize-winning and bestselling books about landscape, nature, people and place, including Underland: A Deep Time Journey (2019). His work has been translated into many languages, won prizes around the world, and his books have been widely adapted for film, television, stage and radio. He has collaborated with artists, film-makers, actors, photographers and musicians, including Hauschka, Willem Dafoe, Karine Polwart and Stanley Donwood. In 2017 he was awarded the E.M. Forster Prize for Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Read an Excerpt
Poem
The earth said
remember me.
The earth said
don’t let go,
said it one day
when I was
accidentally
listening, I
heard it, I felt it
like temperature,
All said in a
whisper—build to-
morrow, make right be-
fall, you are not
free, other scenes
are not taking
place, time is not filled,
time is not late, there is
a thing the emptiness
needs as you need
emptiness, it
shrinks from light again &
again, although all things
are present, a
fact a day a
bird that warps the
arithmetic of per-
fection with its
arc, passing again &
again in the evening
air, in the pre-
vailing wind, making no
mistake—yr in-
difference is yr
principal beauty
the mind says all the
time—I hear it—I
hear it every-
where. The earth
said remember
me. I am the
earth it said. Re-
member me.
Tree
Today on two legs stood and reached to the right spot as I saw it
choosing among the twisting branches and multifaceted changing shades,
and greens, and shades of greens, lobed, and lashing sun, the fig that seemed to me the
perfect one, the ready one, it is permitted, it is possible, it is
actual. The VR glasses are not needed yet, not for now, no, not for this while
longer. And it is warm in my cupped palm. And my fingers close round but not too
fast. Somewhere wind like a hammerstroke slows down and lengthens
endlessly. Closer-in the bird whose coin-toss on a metal tray never stills to one
face. Something is preparing to begin again. It is not us. Shhh say the spreading sails of
cicadas as the winch of noon takes hold and we are wrapped in day and hoisted
up, all the ribs of time showing through in the growing in the lengthening
harness of sound—some gnats nearby, a fly where the white milk-drop of the
torn stem starts. Dust on the eglantine skin, white powder in the confetti of light
all up the branches, truth, sweetness of blood-scent and hauled-in light, withers of
the wild carnival of tree shaking once as the fruit is torn from its dream. Remain I
think backing away from the trembling into full corrosive sun. Momentary blindness
follows. Correction. There are only moments. They hurt. Correction. Must I put down
here that this is long ago. That the sky has been invisible for years now. That the ash
of our fires has covered the sun. That the fruit is stunted yellow mold when it appears
at all and we have no produce to speak of. No longer exists. All my attention is
free for you to use. I can cast farther and farther out, before the change, a page turned,
we have gone into another story, history floundered or one day the birds dis-
appeared. The imagination tried to go here when we asked it to, from where I hold the
fruit in my right hand, but it would not go. Where is it now. Where is this here where
you and I look up trying to make sense of the normal, turn it to life, more life,
disinterred from desire, heaved up onto the dry shore awaiting the others who could
not join us in the end. For good. I want to walk to the left around this tree I have made
again. I want to sit under it full of secrecy insight immensity vigor bursting complexity
swarm. Oh great forwards and backwards. I never felt my face change into my new
face. Where am I facing now. Is the question of good still stinging the open before us
with its muggy destination pitched into nothingness? Something expands in you
where it wrenches-up its bright policing into view—is this good, is this the good—
under the celebrating crowd, inside the silences it forces hard away all round itself,
where chanting thins, where we win the war again, made thin by bravery and belief,
here’s a polaroid if you want, here’s a souvenir, here now for you to watch unfold, up
close, the fruit is opening, the ribs will widen now, it is all seed, reddish foam, history.
The Sure Place
Outside the window this morning, I reach to it, the newest
extension, here at second story, of the wisteria vine—
the tenth summer’s growth,
the August 13th portion of,
the rootball planted when still
the mother of a new child,
one almost tired-looking very silent out-arriving
tendril—what kind of energy is this in my hands,
this tress of glucose and watery scribbling—something which cannot reach
conclusion, my open palm just under it,
the outermost question being asked me by the world today—
it is weak it is exactly the right weakness—
we have other plans for your life says the world—
wind coming from below with the summery tick in it,
where it rounds and tucks-up from fullness where it allows one to hear
the rattling in the millions of now-drying seedpods
hanging in the trees off the walls under the hedges,
every leaf has other plans for you say the minutes also the seconds also the tiniest
fractions of whatever atoms make this a hot breezeless day,
in which what regards the soul is what it has given back
(when the sky is torn)(when the seas are poured forth)
the wisteria in my hand: who made it, who made it right,
what does it know of the day of reckoning, is today its day—
I could pull it, my vine, down, I could rip it out—still
no day of reckoning—the day it is said when no soul
can help another—each is alone—the unseen will say do not hoard me—
do not—as I hold its tether in the morning-light slant—
as the horizon does not seem to hoard the unseen—
so also the ideas are not emptied, look I am holding one—
shall we say that this instant is the end of time
where I raise my hand into the advancing morning
where the dawn-cool lifts to let the stillness of midday be seen
here underneath these low-flowing mists
which all the long time are still and waiting
for that one heat that will not change its face,
even when the horsemen ride up and it is time, and the face of the heat
stays, shimmers-stays, and the knives of the day turn blade-out
in the long corridor of noon which comes looking for this tendril—
and I hold it tight to the stone
as I bring the string round it
not to crush the sucrose and glucose in it but still
to hold it back that the as yet unformed blossoms
that would channel up it might channel up it
coming finally to spawn in long grapelike drooping
which the bees next month—what is that—will come to inhabit,
a slowness which is exactly the right slowness,
and I tell you I can feel in it that one crisp thought
which I must find a way to fix
upon this wall, driving a nail in now, and then a length of string,
around which to wrap this new growth, for it to cling to and surpass
so that next week when I look again it will have woven round its few more times
and grown hairy in its clinging and gotten to a new length
which we will be called upon to tie back, new knot, new extension,
to the next-on nail yet further up
on what remains on what’s left of this wall.
The Hiddenness of the World
The lovers disappear into the woods again. The war is
on. The blizzard on, in its own way. Also many interpretations
on their way—of fascism, of transcendence, of what you mean by
perhaps when you look at me that way. A minute more and then a
minute more you look. And then? And then—everything would have been
different. But the lovers are in the woods again, the signifier is in
the woods, the revolution of the ploughshare in, clod-crumble in, cloud-
tumble, hope and its stumble in—everything would have been, could
have been different—do you not think—and the war still on—and
would you have gone—could you spare an arm, an eye, a foot is a thing
one hopes to keep, one’s stop and go, one’s step, one’s only way
which could have been another way, but wasn’t. Do I have to end
in order to begin, I ask the light that lingers on the trees—between the
trees—the lovers have disappeared into again. I cannot breathe. This verge
is taking up all of my life—is it my time or space, I cannot tell—this being here but then
not here, trying to suss out all the fundamental laws—like sniffing-in the day I
think—the human laws, the commonalities we call our word-to-word thing, our
love—what else shall I think—that emotions have no significance? life no validity?
We’re going to see a movie later on. There is a terrible thing inside of me.
It must not grow. I can hear my own scared space apologizing now to every
thing. Like a lightning bolt come when a blizzard was expected. It looks
expensive in the sky. Breaks nothing but still whacks us like a stick,
hissing you must forget organic life, your little dagger of right/
wrong, your leprosy of love, of hate, of all such local temporary wonders. The lovers
are taking their time I think. The storm appears above the woods like a radio
left on in an abandoned car. Are they apologizing now, again, to the earth,
are they wishing they could stop and hide—let’s be the lucky ones that don’t
go out again—are they standing terrified in their Jerusalem of knowing things, of
things, a couple of lucky ducks, blood flowing normally though maybe a little
fast, because of all the promises that must be made, so fast, my arm, my name,
I swear I’ll never tell, all the impending before the ambulance of the outside
arrives to touch them when the last trees are surpassed and nothing but
this clearing’s left. The light is hammering down its thousand
fists. From war it looks like blossoming. It’s forcing the green fuse. It’s synthesizing
lapse. The huge wild oleanders sway. It all awaits this temporary race—run
run—our race—the great fires seeping deep into this thinnest moment from the
only now—why don’t they wake us—no—we want to sleep—the lovers in the
movie of the woods, I see them from my inner life, I see skin slip, light reach, face scar
itself with time, hair burn, leaf throne itself, and nothing turn, brush, sweat—the fire,
the now—it screams at us year after year—each day so sweet—almost a
duplicate, unnerving us, celestial us, looking everywhere in day for the origins of,
the hidden part of, the natural—wrong search—wrong fires—nothing will be done in
time—no one wishes to become—preparedness is dull—such thirst for this delay,
this looking away, this sanity—the lovers in the woods, really in the outside now—un-
bounded delirium, abstraction, hidden real, dark realm—have no more access to
the day.... But could it be more beautiful. The wind has dropped. Two cardinals play
in the young oak. They slip and rise. In distance, bells. Wind then no wind. A previous
life, a hummingbird, has found the agapanthus there. It always does. Its blossom
always blossoms just in time. Either nothing is alone. Or everything. You are alone in
the alone. To exit the human is to exit the singular, the plural, the collective, the
dream. The woods have an entrance. From where I watch I do not think I’ll see them
exit who went in, here at the start, the only start, we are filtering them out, are leaving them
in dark, in hiddenness, all excess, all sincerity. Don’t touch. In the
flamboyant interim, burn. Feel this outsideness here. Here on this page. Here in my head.
You. You in me in this final time. My shadow. Haunted. Organic. Temporary.
Table of Contents
To the Last Be Human xv
Introduction Robert Macfarlane
Sea Change
I
Sea Change 3
Embodies 6
This 8
Guantánamo 10
Underworld 12
Futures 14
II
Later in Life 19
Just Before 22
Loan 24
Summer Solstice 27
Full Fathom 30
The Violinist at the Window, 1918 32
III
Nearing Dawn 37
Day Off 40
Positive Feedback Loop 42
Belief System 45
Root End 48
Undated Lullaby 51
No Long Way Round 54
Place
I
Sundown 61
Cagnes Sur Mer 1950 64
Mother and Child (The Road at the Edge of the Field) 67
Untitled 71
The Bird on My Railing 74
II
End 81
On The Virtue of the Dead Tree 84
Dialogue (Of the Imagination's Fear) 87
Employment 90
Treadmill 92
III
Of Inner Experience 97
Torn Score 100
The Sure Place 103
Although 105
IV
The Bird That Begins It 111
Lull 114
Waking 117
The Future of Belief 120
Earth 123
V
Lapse 129
Message from Armagh Cathedral 2011 133
Fast
I
Ashes 141
Honeycomb 142
Deep Water Trawling 144
Self Portrait at Three Degrees 146
Shroud 148
from the Enmeshments 150
We 152
Fast 155
II
Reading to My Father 161
The Post Human 164
The Medium 166
Vigil 171
With Mother in the Kitchen 174
Dementia 177
III
To Tell of Bodies Changed to Different Forms 183
Self Portrait: May I Touch You 186
Incarnation 188
From Inside the MRI 194
Prying 198
CRYO 203
IV
Double Helix 209
The Mask Now 214
Mother's Hands Drawing Me 218
Runway
I
All 227
Tree 230
I'm Reading Your Mind 232
My Skin Is 234
When Overfull Of Pain I 236
Overheard in the Herd 238
II
[To] The Last [Be] Human 243
From The Transience 246
Prayer Found Under Floorboard 248
Carnation/Re-In 250
Becoming Other 252
Thaw 254
Exchange 257
III
Sam's Dream 263
Sam's Standing 267
Whereas I Had Not Yet In This Life Seen 270
Rail 272
I Won't Live Long 274
Scarcely There 277
Un- 280
IV
The Hiddenness of the World 287
Runaway 290
It Cannot Be 294
Whom Are You 296
Siri U 298
In The Nest® 300
The Wake Off the Ferry 305
Poem 306
Acknowledgments 309
About the Author 311