hey there fellow bloggers of ASTU 100,

the past two weeks we’ve really been focusing on trauma and poetry, two themes that seem to go hand in hand. Specifically though, trauma caused by acts of terror. Something about studying poetry on the subject, however, has made me question who is responsible for terror? From the works of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay, it would seem the US military are the bad guys, but from the point of view of many Americans, it is only in retaliation to greater evils. The collection of poems from the detainees of Guantanamo Bay is quite controversial in this way. Many even think that the poems should never have been released. But if poetry in itself is an act of self expression, then are some people not allowed to that right?

I found the poems from Guantanamo Bay tied in nicely with Juliana Spahr’s collection of poetry “This Connection of Everyone with Lungs.” To me, her poems were trying to relay the themes of connection and disconnection. The first poem of her book titled, Poem Written After September 11/2001, especially emphasized this. I found that basically, her poems were a more artistic way of putting Judith Butler’s theory from her novel “Frames of War.” 

In many of her poems and especially in the last one of the book, she repeats a theme of everyday life but compares it to warfare. For example, Spahr writes:

“In bed, when I stroke the down on yours cheeks, I stroke also the carrier battle group ships, the guided missile cruisers, and the guided missile destroyers.”

I think what she’s trying to say with this repeated theme is that with everything that is revealed in your life, there is a life connected to yours that is concealed, or ignored. But we are inevitably connected to these lives and aspects of life. As Spahr repeats in her poems, “How lovely and how doomed this connection of everyone with lungs.”

Citations

Spahr, Juliana. This Connection of Everyone with Lungs Poems. Berkeley: U of California, 2005. Print.