December 5, 2005

Juliana Spahr, this connection of everyone with lungs (Berkeley, CA: Univ of California, 2005). 75 pages.

"poemwrittenafterseptember11/2001," the opening poem, should be mandatory reading: for poets, for non-poets, for anyone with skin with recognition of an outside outside of their skin. This is a work likely to make Buddhists and Spinozans happy, but points to a universal condition of humanity that few since the late 1800s have tried to posit in such a positive light, and which does so on such a convincingly human level as to make it sucessful in sceptical, more humanistic times.

The optimism presented here, naive or not, seems genuine; and presents a break from the bleak pessimism of post-WWII (WWI in Europe; in fact, maybe there's a hint of an Elouardian tradition at work here) literature.

"poemswrittenfromnovember30/2002tomarch27/2003" act as a time capsule of sorts, recording assessments of world events (many of which registered in the papers, but not in the American consciousness; Kenya for example) as the United States marched towards war. What is written and what we will remember is telling of America's insistence on hegemony in the Middle East, while it lets the entire continent of Africa and other concerns float far below its (moral/ethical?) radar.