This Connection of Everyone with Lungs, Juliana Spahr’s 2005 collection of poetry has been described as “part planetary love poem, part 24/7 news flash” [1] . The opening lines of “Poem Written After September 11/2001” start at the most fundamental level–the cellular level. She writes, “There are these things: / cells, the movement of cells and the division of cells and then the general beating of circulation / and hands, and body, and feet / and skin that surrounds hands, body, feet” (ll. 1-5). This vision of unity is immediately disrupted, however. “But outside of this shape is space. / There is space between the hands. / There is space between the hands and space around the hands. There is space around the hands and space in the room. / There is space in the room that surrounds the shapes of everyone’s hands and body and feet and cells and the beating contained within,” the poem continues. This is a guiding tension throughout the work, and one that responds directly to Whitman’s legacy.
Whitman’s attempt to embrace all things at once–his project of total affirmation–has been challenging to poets left in his wake. In Song of Myself, Whitman self-identifies (strongly, with the literal statement of “I”) with those far outside of his experience, and with those undergoing seemingly contradictory experiences. “I am the hounded slave” (ll. 837), he writes. Meanwhile, he also identifies himself with masters. It is this sort of all-encompassing embrace that Spahr responds to in This Connection of Everyone with Lungs. “How connected we are with everyone,” Spahr observes. This observation leads her into other observations about the horrors of 9/11, and that she is also connected with “titanium and nickle and minute silicon particles from pulverized glass and concrete.” Spahr, like Whitman, seems willing to embrace the totality of things as they are. However, there is a crucial difference. Rather than pure affirmation, Spahr is somewhat more nuanced: “How lovely and how doomed this connection of everyone with lungs.” This concluding line is a little more challenging for its peculiar mix of optimism and despair. How are we to read this line? As an embrace of this doom that we are throwing ourselves into? Is it rather ironically distant?
I really enjoyed how you seem to explore the interaction and tension between unity and space. There seems to be so much Whitmanian energy radiating through this Spahr’s work and you touch on a lot of those similarities. There are so many instances where Whitman portrays the body and the soul as one entity. It seems that Spahr also acknowledges the unifying nature of the body and the soul but also, like you said in your response, the “space” too. I read the final line to be a very realistic mindset when it comes to the connection of humans. Specifically, I feel like Whitman is sometimes too idealistic when it comes to human relationships. But here, Sparh is saying that we are both “lovely” and “doomed”. It seems that the same type of things that connect us and unify us (our bodies, or cells, our organs) are the exact things that also “doom” us. Perhaps because we are physically unified, we are thus mortal entities and subject to time.
I like the focus on the limiting and empowering aspects of humanity and our differences. I too had a difficult time assessing whether Spahr was arguing in favor of humanity and our tendency to join together and simultaneously insist on separating. Perhaps her tone is intentionally undecided, whereas Whitman confidently assumed a positive outlook on humanity, emphasizing our bravery and ability to enact change and progress through conflict and resolution, separation and joining together, etc…Spahr sees no real reason to call ourselves noble but rather draws attention to natural our resistance to step outside ourselves, balanced by our desperation to join with others.