Jorie Graham was born May 9, 1951, in New York City, the daughter of journalist Curtis Bill and sculptor Beverly (Stoll) Pepper. She was raised in Italy, as her father worked as Newsweek's bureau chief in Rome. As a teenager, she haunted old churches and watched Michelangelo Antonioni films, soaking up Italy's history and culture. After being expelled from the Sorbonne in Paris for participating in student protests, Graham transferred to New York University, where she studied film with Haig Manoogian and Martin Scorsese. Graham began publishing poems in literary journals and magazines regularly during her twenties and published her first book, Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts, in 1980, with Princeton University Press. In poems such as "Mind," critics recognized Graham's metaphysical leanings and her ability to synthesize disparate material from the sciences, philosophy, literature, art, and history. Her primary influences, however, are modern poets such as William...