I want to talk about the first poem in Juliana Sphar’s book “This Connection Of Everyone With Lungs“. I realized that it is very important to always read a poem more than once. Listening to a poem and researching about the background can also have a huge influence on how we perceive and interpret it.
A very interesting aspect of this poem is the way you feel while you are reading or hearing it. It seems as if there is a tension building up through the repetition of the same lines over and over again. It seemed as if there was no end or beginning. The fact that this poem was written right after September 11 also contributes to this tension.
Looking back to when I heard the poem for the first time I remember that I was waiting for something to happen although I didn’t even know what I was expecting. The repetitions were exhausting. I have to be honest I just wanted it to be over because it started to drive me crazy.
The way the poem is written gives me the impression of a person who is suffering from a deep shock and hasn’t found her/his way back to reality yet.
Is that how the shock felt like after September 11? Did everything seem like a repetition? The planes crashing into the towers over and over again on television. The same news over and over again. And you just wanted it to be over but there was no going back. And the only thing you could do was breathing “the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the building“ (Sphar) and to keep going.
Did all thoughts seem like repetitions and were just running in circles?
