Dear Reader,
Recently I have found poetry reconstructing itself before my eyes. I’ve examined it from entirely new standpoints, and it has offered itself as dimensional, rather than a flat surface (i.e. what I used to know it as). My past experiences with poetry have been altogether pretty mundane unless you count Shel Silverstein’s “Backward Bill”, which is still to this day my favorite poem. From never being able to unpack its convoluted connotations, to being forced to produce unmeaningful, strictly structured work, poetry has not personally been a very appealing form of literature to me.
After reading and discussing Juliana Spahr’s “Poem Written After September 11/2001”, I was surprised with the unconventional style of her work. Her layered words and fast pace invited us to look deeper through the ambiguity. As we discussed in class, her writing works to subtly control our breathing, increase our heart rate, and create rising anxiety while reading. This binds her words with tension and appropriately prepares us for the meaningful nature of her poetry. It describes a connection across geographical expanses and through biological similarities (“everyone with lungs”); through this, land is made sacred, human connection is revealed and solidified. This ultimately caused me to consider our individual influences that reach across the world, and how most of these influences go unnoticed. People prefer to dismiss their personal impacts rather than making an effort to be knowledgeable about what or whom exactly they’re impacting. The popular saying, “ignorance is bliss”, excuses humanity from the responsibility we have to each other – accountability has been abandoned and our connectivity has weakened. Nearly everyone experiences a moment in time where a dark topic is intentionally avoided, especially when you personally have something to do with it.
If we are all connected, as Juliana Spahr suggests, we have a moral obligation to recognize our own footprint. Whether you’re driving a very resource-demanding vehicle that has major CO2 emissions or buying cheap clothing from a “fast fashion” brand that employs young children and pays them 15 cents an hour, you are supporting the critical environmental and humanitarian issues present in our modern world. It is absolutely vital to recognize our personal contributions that reach across expanses of land, you could save a life and save the environment in the process. Through literature and poetry, our connectivity is announced and recognized, which I personally believe could aid people in realizing the importance of their individual influences.
