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    This Connection of Everyone with Lungs: Poems
    This Connection of Everyone with Lungs: Poems
    This Connection of Everyone with Lungs: Poems
    Ebook55 pages37 minutes

    This Connection of Everyone with Lungs: Poems

    By Juliana Spahr

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Part planetary love poem, part 24/7 news flash, the hypnotic poems of This Connection of Everyone with Lungs wrap with equal, angular grace around lovers and battleships. These poems hear the tracer fire in a bird's song and capture cell division and troop deployments in the same expansive thought. They move through concentric levels of association and embrace —from the space between the hands to the mesosphere and back again—touching everything in between. The book's focus shifts between local and global, public and private, individual and social. Everything gets in: through all five senses, through windows, between your sheets, under your skin.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of California Press
    Release dateApr 1, 2005
    ISBN9780520938274
    This Connection of Everyone with Lungs: Poems
    Author

    Juliana Spahr

    Juliana Spahr is a poet, critic, and editor. Among her books of poems are Fuck You—Aloha—I Love You and Response, winner of the National Poetry Series Award. She coedits the international arts journal Chain with Jena Osman.

    Read more from Juliana Spahr

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    Reviews for This Connection of Everyone with Lungs

    3.5/5

    32 ratings2 reviews

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    • 2/5
      I love the first poem, which is a conceptual piece on breath. The repetition and slow building are effective and hypnotic. I found the remaining pieces, mainly collections of snippets from the news, tiresome, heavy-handed, and preachy.
    • 5/5
      Truly connected. Amazing. An act of courage and resistance. A poetics of the moment.

    Book preview

    This Connection of Everyone with Lungs - Juliana Spahr

    poemwrittenafterseptember11/2001

    There are these things:

    cells, the movement of cells and the division of cells

    and then the general beating of circulation

    and hands, and body, and feet

    and skin that surrounds hands, body, feet.

    This is a shape,

    a shape of blood beating and cells dividing.

    But outside of this shape is space.

    There is space between the hands.

    There is space between the hands and space around the hands.

    There is space around the hands and space in the room.

    There is space in the room that surrounds the shapes of everyone’s hands and body and feet and cells and the beating contained within.

    There is space, an uneven space, made by this pattern of bodies.

    This space goes in and out of everyone’s bodies.

    Everyone with lungs breathes the space in and out as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands in and out

    as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands in and out

    as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room in and out

    as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the building that surrounds the room in and out

    as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the building that surrounds the room and the space of the neighborhoods nearby in and out

    as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the building that surrounds the room and the space of the neighborhoods nearby and the space of the cities in and out

    as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the building that surrounds the room and the space of the neighborhoods nearby and the space of the cities and the space of the regions in and out

    as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the building that surrounds the room and the space of the neighborhoods nearby and the space of the cities and the space of the regions and the space of the nations in and out

    as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the building that surrounds the room and the space of the neighborhoods nearby and the space of the cities and the space of the regions and the space of the nations

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