In a country devastated by the attacks of 9/11, Spahr’s poetry emerges and helps us recognize the connections between each other. In her collection of This Connection of Everyone with Lungs, Juliana Spahr implements the trope of skin in order to show the connectivity of “everyone with lungs”. Skin is used paradoxically. Spahr describes skin as “a boundary separating yous from the rest of yous “(19). We are each contained in our own skin, therefore bounded in it, separate from others because of it. However, it is also the first point of contact between two people, bringing them together, representative of the intimacy and nakedness between two individuals. Skin embodies either connectivity or separation through the choices we make. If we choose to let someone into our lives, our skin becomes permeable, and network forms between them. If we choose to separate ourselves from people, either consciously or unconsciously (through ethnocentrism or privilege, for example), our skin contains us, separating us and establishing a boundary between the “us” vs. “them” binary. Spahr describes skin as “a boundary separating yous from the rest of yous “(19). Here, the separations and the connection come together. Spahr used the vocabulary of boundaries and separation, but she uses the plural second person, “yous”, to represent the connectivity between us all within the perceived separation and difference from others.

The trope of skin is used further to evoke the larger message of the poem and larger abstractions we have discussed in class, those of war and global citizenship. These abstractions are best exemplified in the following quote: “I speak of boundaries and connections, locals and globals, butterfly wings and hurricanes” (20).  Skin is something everyone has. However, it also differentiates us through, color, hue, structure, etc. Viewing skin in this way, we can see how it bounds us along local lines, but also connects us to a global state of being. While we differentiate ourselves from others and constantly focus on these differences, Spahr urges us understand the importance of how we are connected through our humanity and being human.

The reference to “butterfly wings” alludes to the butterfly effect – a phenomenon in which a small localized change in a complex system, such as the globe, can have large effects elsewhere – which elicits thought about the ways in which each of us are complicit in events across the world, in this case in the mechanisms of war. It serves as reminder of our positions, more than ever in this increasingly globalized world, as global citizens.

Through this trope of skin, it is important to recognize, as global citizens, how our skin connects us through our humanity and to recognize the importance of every life. However, while Spahr details the way in which “everyone with lungs” is connected through skin, breathing, beds, etc., she also complicates the issue. It is ignorant to think we are all the same in all ways, and unhelpful to suppress the differences for the sake of convenient homogenization. Spahr thoroughly complicates this desire to amalgamate, offers us room to question our own position and privilege through the complexity of our interconnectedness.

Spahr, Juliana. This Connection of Everyone with Lungs. Berkeley and Los Angeles : University of California Press, 2005.