SOURCE: "The Mind of the Matter: CAT Scanning a Scat Singer," in Parnassus, Vols. 12-13, Nos. 2, 1, Spring-Summer and Fall-Winter, 1985, pp. 588-601.

In the review below, Melnyczuk compares Erosion to Graham's earlier writing and finds the poems in Erosion more urgent and arresting.

Fishing for subjects in her first book, Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts, Jorie Graham casts a wide net. Her catch includes trees, birds, language, paintings, self-portraits, philosophers, wildflowers, recherché facts about the habits of squid and the like. The list is various enough to suggest a genuinely restive and curious sensibility. Better still, the play of the poet's mind over her objets trouvés is refreshingly idiosyncratic. In "Self-Portrait" the speaker faces a window instead of a mirror and describes the self in terms of what it sees:

      After fresh snow I'll go up to the attic and look out.
      My looking is a set...