Juliana Spahr is not a student of Romanticism. She does not wax poetic on the restorative power of nature. Instead Spahr’s poems manifest themselves in ecopoetry, in which she utilizes her freeform style to explore the interdependent and often injurious relationship between humanity and the natural world.
Spahr begins “Gentle Now, Don’t Add to Heartache” with the lines “We come into the world./We come into the world and there it is.” With simple language she tells her reader that mankind is an imposition on the world – the world was here long before us and will be long after we are gone. She goes on to explore the impressions that nature makes on people and the effects of people on nature. The first three sections of “Gentle” possess a childlike wonder and love for the stream and the wildlife within it. “This is where we learned love and where we learned depth and where we learned layers and where we learned connections between layers.” Following this declaration of love is a Whitmanian catalog of all the things/animals that Spahr’s collective “we” learned about and loved. In these beginning sections, Spahr depicts a positive relationship with nature and follows the Transcendentalist thought that nature plays a significant role in human identity and connection.
But in section 4, a feeling of crisis regarding the dichotomy of society/nature is revealed. “It was not all long lines of connection and utopia.” In the following lines Spahr shows both deliberate and accidental pollution of nature and (consequently) of humanity. “These things were a part of us…but we did not know it yet.” I feel like Spahr is lamenting the Transcendentalist idea of a collective soul and the active role of the natural world in forming human identity. Not because they exist together, but because “we” aren’t always aware of the effects of this coexistence.
Spahr’s poem does not seem to end in crisis though. Spahr follows the Whitmanian trajectory of ecstasy, crisis, and recovery. As she turns from the stream and from the natural world, the collective “each other” gains preeminence in the last section of “Gentle.” The beauty of the stream is replaced by the beauty of human connection.
Claire,
There is so much I could say about both Spahr’s poem and your response to it. There is so much detail in this poem that it takes careful reading and sifting through to find the greater meaning. This is why I think you’re right to assume Spahr is lamenting the Transcendentalist idea of a collective soul and the active role of the natural world in forming the human identity. The whole poem incorporates the smallest components of this larger idea, which Spahr represents through breaking down each piece, of the stream for example, while simultaneously showing how it is all connected. I also think you’re correct in pointing out that Spahr is trying to show how human beings came into this already connected world, and are just going about trying to find our place in it. While Spahr criticizes humans for their relationship to the earth, I thought it was also good that you noticed the Whitmanian trajectory of ecstasy, crisis, and recovery in this poem. I didn’t initially see that pattern in the poem, so I think it was very smart of you to point it out.