Things of Each Possible Relation Hashing Against One Another

by Juliana Spahr

Poetry. Australian ethnohistorian Greg Dening argues that there are two views that define the Pacific: a view from the sea (the view of those who arrived from elsewhere) and the view from the land (those who were already there). THINGS OF EACH POSSIBLE RELATION HASHING AGAINST ONE ANOTHER is a series of poems that opens with the view from the sea and ends with the view from the land and are about the ecological hashing that happens as these two views meet in Hawai'i.

Genres: Poetry

32 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2003

About the author

Juliana Spahr (born 1969) is an American poet, critic, and editor. She is the recipient of the 2009 Hardison Poetry Prize awarded by the Folger Shakespeare Library to honor a U.S. poet whose art and teaching demonstrate great imagination and daring.

Both Spahr's critical and scholarly studies, i.e., Everybody’s Autonomy: Connective Reading and Collective Identity (2001), and her poetry have shown Spahr's commitment to fostering a "value of reading" as a communal, democratic, open process. Her work therefore "distinguishes itself because she writes poems for which her critical work calls." In addition to teaching and writing poetry, Spahr is also an active editor. Spahr received the National Poetry Series Award for her first collection of poetry, Response (1996).

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[C.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book gets us readers seriously taking seriously the idea of taking it to the cells. I mean, I took it to the cells, and the total surge of what all beings have at stake here. Unlike any other book it comes through, for me, here, with these poems. Other poems about Nature want to make the urgency come on, but they wind up saying out loud the word Urgent once in a while, instead of MAKING it come on in the poems.

And too the idea of NOT having Nature seen without the interference, like many Nature poets will do, too, as though trying to manage beauty by itself. As though beauty is by itself.

As though something is beautiful without something ugly to measure against, waste, corruption of soil, air, water, thoughts, actions.

"so we will be
it was consequently and consequently is it
we will be so
we will be thus
it was consequently and consequently it is
therefore we are
we are consequently
we are consequently
so we are
alaaiha, 'e'ea, alawi, crow, apapane, mudhen
we are so...."

Getting into this world with the poems is not an easy thing, but these poems just made it easier. We are so!

CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com