Well Then There Now - Softcover

Spahr, Juliana

4.23

121 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1574232177 ISBN 13: 9781574232172

Publisher: Black Sparrow Press, 2011

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Accretion, articulation, exploration, transformation, naming, sentiment, private and public property these are just a few of Juliana Spahr's interests. In this, her third collection of poetry, we find her performing her characteristic magic, turning these theoretical concerns into a poetic odyssey.

From her first poem, written in Honolulu, Hawaii, to the last, written in Berkeley, California, about her childhood in Appalachia, Spahr takes us on a wild patchwork journey backwards and forwards in time and space, tracking change in ecology, society, economies, herself. Through a collage of ''found language'' a deep curiosity about place, and a restless intelligence, Spahr demonstrates the vibrant possibilities of an investigatory poetics. This verse is more inclusive than exclusive; consistently Spahr includes grape varietals, the shrinking of public beachfront in Hawaii, endangered plant, fish, and wildlife species, the melting of the polar ice caps, and comparative poverty rates in her eclectic repertoire. She also knows how to sing in the oldest tradition of poetry of loss, and her lament for nature is the most keen.

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About the Author:

Juliana Spahr is a poet, scholar, and editor. Among her previous works are This Connection of Everyone with Lungs (University of California, 2005), and The Transformation (Atelos, 2007).

Review:

Spahr's fifth book of imaginative writing (both poems and prose) should be a blockbuster, a lasting disturbance; a work of crisp wit, bizarre conjunctions and ultimately enduring moral authority; it is also the best, and perhaps the most widely accessible, thing that Spahr has done. --Publishers Weekly, starred review

Her poems seem particularly vital at the moment not just for the pleasure inherent in their forms of language, but also for the challenge posed by their focus on community. Spahr tests and rejects any separation between intimate passion and general policy. In her poems, love does not resist the world beyond; love lets it in. --Los Angeles Review of Books

Across mountains and oceans, Juliana Spahr spins her original upbringing into a fine assortment of poetry. --Midwest Book Review

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