Paul Holdengräber is joined by writer Jorie Graham on episode 139 of The Quarantine Tapes.

A celebrated poet and educator, Jorie talks with Paul about the current state of the world, and how the memory of history impacts our future.

Paul and Jorie take the time to go in depth in this conversation; Jorie tells stories of her childhood in Europe and her coming of age in the street protests in Paris, and her current life while existing in these confines of the pandemic. They talk of poetry, extinction, oblivion, and how our present is giving new meanings to old words. The pair also unpacks the politics and problems of mob consciousness, and how the future is defined by the human gift of imagination and honoring the past.

 Their conversation picks up with a look at how the technologies of social media and the internet are shaping people’s beliefs and our sense of agency. Jorie expresses her fears of our society’s amnesia, worrying that when this pandemic ends, we will act as though it never happened and try to move on without learning anything.

Then, Jorie takes a look at the letter left by George H. W. Bush for incoming president Bill Clinton. In a fascinating close reading, she compares that hand-off of power to this year’s election, shining a light at what has changed politically at the level of language.

Jorie Graham was born in New York City in 1950, the daughter of a journalist and a sculptor. She was raised in Rome, Italy and educated in French schools. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris before attending New York University as an undergraduate, where she studied filmmaking. She received an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa.

Graham is the author of numerous collections of poetry, most recently Sea Change (Ecco, 2008), Never (2002), Swarm (2000), and The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994, which won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.  Graham has also edited two anthologies, Earth Took of Earth: 100 Great Poems of the English Language (1996) and The Best American Poetry 1990.

Her many honors include a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship and the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

She has taught at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and is currently the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University. She served as a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets from 1997 to 2003.

Credits:

Paul Holdengraber - Co-Creator, Host, OLA Director
Anthony Audi - Co-Creator, Researcher, OLA Director
Alejandro Cohen - Co-Creator, Producer, Composer
Christian Pitt - Production Coordinator 
Erin Cooney - Copy, Production
Dublab Team