Richard's Review of Juliana Sphar

"This Connection of Everyone with Lungs" written by Juliana Sphar is an account of everything that happened after the tragedy of 9/11 and before the war in the middle east began. It is divided into only two poems, the first entitled "A poem written after september 11/2001" which chronicles the camaraderie felt in the nation after the world trade center tragedy, and the second is called, "Poem written from Nov. 30/2002 to March 27/2003" which is a chronicle of all the news leading up to the declaration of the war on terror, which is written on a day by day basis.

Sphar's style is a very hypnotic one, presenting facts in a more roundabout way. The first poem relies on repetition to ingrain itself into the mind of the reader, repeating itself and adding to itself over and over. Consider this excerpt from the beginning of the first poem:
"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" (pg. 5)
It's similar to a child's nursery rhyme, such as "The House that Jack Built" but at the same time it is referencing such a tragic event that it draws the reader in and sends the mind into a spiral, helping it to remember the poem. The second poem also uses it, but it is more varied since it is a day-by-day log of the different news reports that were given leading up to the start of the war in Afghanistan, and as such the repetition and subject changes from date to date. For example, in the second poem, an entry for December 2, 2002 has many of its stanzas beginning with the words, "While we turned sleeping uneasily" and then going on to mention something that happened on the news. While the repetition does not extend as the first poem does, this is still an effective use of repetition. Consider two adjacent stanzas from the entry that was just mentioned:
"While we turned sleeping uneasily perhaps J Lo gave Ben a prenuptial demand for sex four times a week.

While we turned sleeping uneasily Liam Gallagher brawled and irate fans complained that "Popstars: The Rivals" was fixed." (pg. 24)

But the ultimate question is does this repetitive, hypnotic way of writing accomplish what it sets out to do? Does it accurately portray the feeling of what was happening after 9/11 in the media? This reader says yes. the repetition of the poems, or at least a single phrase within the poem gives it a very hypnotic feel. It helps the poem to stick with us and helps us to think about it on a grander scale. It presents the events that she saw in an interesting and interpretive way that causes us to pause and consider what we had read and what was happening in both our own country and abroad. It is a fine example of how language can be used to interpret the same event in a different way from everyone else and this book is a great showing of how the country quickly lost its feeling of camaraderie and became divided over the war.