In our ASTU class, we recently finished reading Juliana Spahr’s book of poetry, This Connection Of Everyone With Lungs, and after having read the first of two poems in the book, we had the opportunity to listen to Spahr read it out loud in an audio tape.
Entitled “poem written after september 11/2001”, it is only eight pages long and much of the poem is some kind of repetition of a previous passage or line. In fact, from the end of page 4 to page 8, the same passage is repeated as more words are added to end, and due to this heavy use of repetition, I found myself skimming over many of the repeated words and phrases when I read the poem. However, on tape I was not able to skip over Spahr’s reading or fast-forward, and so I had to listen as she read out each word. Listening to “poem written after september 11/2001” being read aloud made me notice and appreciate further the rhythm of the verses that resulted form the repetition.
In addition to gaining a better sense of the rhythm of the poem, listening to the audio also put the tone of the poem in a new perspective. In the audio, Spahr sounded very monotone, and while on paper, I would notice certain phrases such as “How connected we are with everyone” (9) and stop to think about its meaning in the poem, Spahr’s reading did not place any accents on particular words or passages, and for good or worse, I felt that those “keywords” seemed to be glossed over. Still, reading the poem so that the words simply washed over the listener may have been the whole point of Spahr’s reading.
Although I have not had much exposure to poetry (or at least little that has continued to resonate with me), both read the poem then hearing the author read it aloud has made me think about its meaning and intent more than I have previously.