End of beauty

Like an abstract painter, Graham spreads the broad lines of her poems over a vast space: that metaphysical territory constituting the ``gorgeous/gap between the mind and the world.´´ It is a mythic dimension no pat labels, such as Classical or Christian, can adequately define, though the poet draws on Genesis , Ovid, and the lives of the saints to set her work in motion. Here the allusions establish wide conceptual frameworks in which the process of thought overshadows the substance. Mind grapples with a force that ``has no shape but point of view,´´ tries to comprehend the ``emptiness . . . just prior to/ the start of a story.´´ Devotional without being religious, these poems transcend their occasional Deep Image tics (a knowing, disembodied tone and weakness for blue) to reinforce Graham´s reputation as a poet of considerable imaginative gifts.Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib.