School of Distance Education
English Literature in the 21
st
century
22
the mind, and she has perfected a kind of syntax that
stays true to the mind’s
weird reasoning, justifications,
leaps of imagination.
The title of the poem suggests, ‘Fast’, holds in
tension the senses of reckless speed (“too much”),
sought-for stability (“not enough”),
and involuntary
abstinence (“starve”). The death of the poet’s father, her
mother’s dementia, her own body’s cancerous mutiny,
ecological “systemicide,” the erosion of humanity, these
misfortunes molded her poetry. Fast is full of unmarked
questions. Here she imagines
an experience she has
never had and never could have.Graham converses with
a
bot,
observing, “. . . here’s the heart of the day, the
flower of time—talk—talk—,” temporality remaining
the
inescapable
substrate of
communication,
a
communication which blooms
inevitably with an ever-
increasing freight of technology that invades our most
intimate spaces, literally delimiting time and everything
else. The thoughts emerging in the poem is purely
personal. The ever present question ‘what is human’
takes on a new import in the face of a forever empty bed
or a loss of mental health. The poem addresses a bigger
concern that of running out for each of us.