In Juliana Spahr’s collection of poems, “This Connection of Everyone with Lungs” Spahr implements several Whitmanian characteristics throughout the two poems. Although she never specifically names Whitman throughout the two poems, there several moments that read like a modern adaptation of a Whitman point-of-view. Moreover, her second poem titled “Poem Written from November 30, 2002, to March 27, 2003” had strong elements taken from Whitman’s “Song of Myself”. First, Spahr frequently steals from Whitman’s literary toolbox when speaking directly to the reader, and vividly describing interacting with the reader in person; “When I reach for your waists, I reach for bombers, cargo, helicopters, and special operations. When I wrap around your bodies, I wrap around the USS Abraham Lincoln, unmanned aerial vehicles, and surveillance.” Obviously, the subject matter of Spahr greatly differs from that of Whitman due to the difference in time period, but the intimacy that Spahr is able to achieve with her reader, and the anti-war message is not lost. Spahr and Whitman go even further with their connection to the reader by assuming the same identity. Spahr does this by following this narrative of her and the reader going to bed together, but with the same war theme that she invokes throughout the poem. Following the aforementioned quote, Spahr says, “When I rest my head upon yours breasts, I rest upon the USS Kitty Hawk…amphibious transport/dock ships follow us into bed.” Spahr is imagining this romantic relationship with her reader, that shows her sarcastic deforming opinion of war, but shares her pains with the reader and faces these trials head-on. Whitman does almost the exact same thing, but in a slightly different way. Whitman’s seminal work “Song of Myself” is Whitman going on train of thought into how happy he is to be himself, and apart of humanity. The poem begins with “I celebrate myself, and sing myself / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” Although this particular poem does not have the anti-war rhetoric that Whitman frequently writes, it grabs the reader the same way as Spahr. Whitman not only addresses the reader as “you” but he literally assumes the same identity as the reader, and treats he and this imaginary reader as the same entity. Another recurring motif in the poetry of Whitman and Spahr is the idea of a voice, and using a voice. Still within “Song of Myself”, Whitman writes, “Through me many long dumb voices, / Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves, / Voices of the diseas’d and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs, / Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion…Through me forbidden voices, / Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil’d and I remove the veil, / Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur’d…” Whitman imagines the diversity of his voice, and what sorts of people he speaks for, but what he is really doing is demonstrating how powerful words, conversation, and specifically literature can be. Similarly, in Spahr’s same poem, “Poem Written from November 30, 2002, to March 27, 2003”, she frequently discusses how casually Americans discuss warfare, and how people are numb to how violent their words content truly is. Spahr says, “We speak of the stinger antiaircraft missiles…when we speak of the SAP AG and the Microsoft RPC hole… When we mumble about whether the mystery disease is a statutory communicable disease…we can’t keep the words M1A1 Abrams battle tanks…from stumbling out of our mouths.” Sphar, like Whitman, observes the power of a voice, and the power of conversation. Spahr takes quite a few pages from Whitman in her construction of her own poetry.
For further research, I am including a link to an article titled “Reader’s Diary: Juliana Spahr’s ‘That Winter the Wolf Came'” in which the author directly states that Spahr takes much of her inspiration form Whitman. Although the poem collection in question is different, it hits the point home that much can be said for the similarities between Whitman and Spahr’s work.
I found it interesting that you chose to focus on the “intimacy” Sparh achieves with her reader, as well as the “anti-war” themes present throughout. Your comment on the difference in time periods is essential to the understanding of the connection between these two poems, I think, because although these two different writers experience very different contexts of war and hate within American culture, the feelings and outcomes of these acts have very similar affects on their work. Another powerful point in your post was the idea of the two writers both focusing on “the voice,” and not just speaking about the “voice of the poem” as we do when studying English. It is true that both Whitman and Sparh sparked conversations with their voices that were beneficial to the understanding and reckoning with such terror and destruction as the events they witnessed and chose to write about.
In each of the connections noted here, there’s an important difference. Spahr certainly shares something with that trademark Whitmanian intimacy, the presumed and hopeful contact with the reader. But for Spahr, this contact is everywhere contaminated by other, less hopeful forms of connection. Whitman’s “every atom” sensibility for Spahr both sponsors intimate connections with others, but also allows in connections with everything else: war, death, contaminants, politics, etc. In that sense, she takes a key Whitmanian move and problematizes and complicates it. Same thing with the idea of Voice. Whitman saw himself as being a mouthpiece for silenced voices. For Spahr, again, this inclusive voice becomes the site of contamination just as her connection with others allowed for more dangerous forms of complicity and contact.