A poem about the todo list and time and consciousness and telephones. Condensed into a kind of stream of exploding images and thoughts. I didn’t pay too much attention to the “Guardian Angel” of the title – the book contains a series of poems that have guardian angels in the titles (but only rarely in the poems themselves).

All of what? The poem that follows or the one that precedes? Some other material? But we’ve introduced the list, where “busyness unfurled its cursive roots.”

Todos always seem necessary as they sprout like seedlings, more and more. Every line of the poem pulls me into a different dimension, from the analogy of the woods to the holiday shopping to the anxious inner dialogue of the speaker.

I think it’s my favorite image in the poem, the sadness of the heart's tears and the kiss of completion. It’s a mixed mess of desires, doesn’t really make sense but resonates on a strange level.

Then a moment of self-consciousness.

I feel as if Jorie Graham is speaking directly to me, about everything I am waiting for and hoping to accomplish. The tone hovers at the edge of being dismissive of all this business. We don’t fall into the clichéd position of claiming none of it matters.

Then, pointing to that which cannot be captured by lists, that which exceeds instrumentality:

Gesturing toward the aleatory, the unknowable, the mystic cloud, the void. The way that the speaker dances instead of singing. The way the sentence flows over lines and lines, like a cascade of possibilities.

If you like Jorie Graham, I suggest checking out David Naimon‘s beautiful interview with her here. There‘s a follow-up conversation that is also worth listening to here.