Refusing to Look Away, Anahid Nersessian. A review of Killing Spree, by the poet Jorie Graham. (New York Review August 20, 2026)
If Killing Spree were merely a lament for a greener, cooler, unpoisoned planet it would still be full of beautiful poems, but it would not achieve the moral sublimity that Graham does. This is a book in which ecocide and genocide go hand in hand, as they do in real life. Several of Graham’s poems appear to be set in Gaza, where war has severely polluted the water and soil. (I say they appear to be set in Gaza although, of course, the location might also be Lebanon or Iran.) “The Zero Point” describes a father in a tent with his son just after the tent is hit by a missile. Graham addresses this father as “you” and also speaks of him in the third person, as if to remind the reader that it is only thanks to an accident of history that she is sitting somewhere in safety, reading a book of poetry, while thousands of miles away some of the world’s wealthiest nations cheerfully drop bombs on refugee camps:
What is that springing forth,
that deep inhalation followed by
nothing.
It’s the trees. Listen to me, think of wind in trees.
Yes the drones pass over and this is their wind.
But it’s still a precious thing. A pure thing. Wind.
It will brush you as though there were leaves, as though there were trees.
When is the last time you saw trees
The Killing Spree, Jorie Graham
