Pulitzer Prize Poetry Winner

The Dream of the Unified Field

by Jorie Graham

Summary

Selected from several earlier volumes, these poems pursue large questions of perception, history, and physical law through long, broken, hesitating lines. Graham interrupts her syntax to enact the mind in the act of thinking, layering memory, painting, and scientific image. The book marks a high point of an ambitious, philosophically restless American poetics.

Historical Context & Significance

Graham's win signaled the Pulitzer's embrace of a more philosophical, postmodern style of verse.