That Winter the Wolf Came

by Juliana Spahr

That Winter the Wolf Came is written for this era of global struggle. It finds its ferment at the intersection of ecological and economic catastrophe. Its feminist and celebratory energy is fueled by street protests and their shattered windows. Amid oil spills and austerity measures and shore birds and a child holding its mother’s hand and hissing teargas canisters, it reminds us exactly what we must fight to defend with a wild ferocity, and what we’re up against.
"In her poems, love does not resist the world beyond; love lets it in. Politics demands feeling rather than denuding it."  — Los Angeles Review of Books "Geography, economics, ecology, hydrology, local and international history; repetition, flat limited diction, lengthy chant; intersections of incompatible discourses, such as a field biologist’s checklist plus memoir, medical record plus ode, incantation plus site Spahr draws on these resources and procedures to make poems that feel like bizarre, careful essays, and essays that feel like sad, extended poems."  — The Nation "...a work of crisp wit, bizarre conjunctions and ultimately enduring moral authority."  — Publisher’s Weekly



It was Non-Revolution. Or it was me. Or it was Non-Revolution and me. I was unsure what it really was. Maybe it was my thoughts. My thoughts at one minute about Non-Revolution. About the smell of Non-Revolution. Sweat, urine, sage, pot, rotting food, hay, all mixed together. Perhaps about Non-Revolution’s body. I am sure I am not the only one who has thought it exceptional, but I am also just as sure that by the standards of bodies, Non-Revolution’s is fine but not exceptional. That is the point. That is why Non-Revolution is called Non-Revolution, why they have revolution as a possibility in their name but it is a modified and thus negated possibility so as to suggest they are possibly neither good nor fucked. Still something about Non-Revolution’s smell and body had gotten into me.

Genres: Poetry, School, American, Environment, Nonfiction

120 pages, Paperback

First published June 9, 2015

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

[yarrow · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up yesterday and basically read it in one sitting. I'm not sure if someone who hadn't experienced the events contained within could have appreciated it as much as I did; I guess that isn't my concern. Juliana captured in a really lucid way the unfolding of events that I hold dear; it struck a pretty intimate chord in reading it. In each of the poems, Juliana switches registers seamlessly from talking about oceanic ecosystems to the minutia of oil extraction to the omnipresent oil byproducts in our lives to parenting to riots. In form she illustrates the inter-permeability of these registers and our entrenchment in them and the potential entrenched in all of it. Her book really stands out in what I've started to think of as the "sad-guy-riot-poem" genre. A lot of other peotry about recent riots tends to feel overthought, and laced throughout with references whose purpose is more to illustrate the intelligence of the poet than anything else. Juliana's, while briliant, couldn't be more different. Her's isn't a view from above, but from within. Her poems are visceral and feeling and anxious and full of desire. The book is almost a phenomenological meditation on what it means to be in these moments, to be a body in them, to have a body with all the pains and sadnesses and joys and ecstasies that entails. It is also a navigation of the melancholia of the post-uprising periods with a sort of determination that is really wonderful and necessary for me right now. I definitely teared up while reading "It's All Good, It's All Fucked" and laughed hysterically during "Turnt."

[Selmaogesther]

Interessant! Både skildring af jegets oplevelse med aktivisme og riots på en meget individuel måde. Men samtidig er digtene på en måde forurenede af olieudslip og andet.
Synes det er smukt og vigtigt at begge ting eksisterer samtidig i værket.

[Cecilie Broholm · Rating 3 out of 5]

nærhed og afstand og revolution og magelighed og afmagt. jeg forstod ikke altid relevansen af det der blev bragt op, men er heller ikke så knowledgeable på området

[Lena , süße Maus]

not a huge fan of this style of poetry, but I like her vibes!

[Marte]

Liten bok med formålet å romme mye. Sånne ting kan gå gæli, men synes ikke at det er tilfellet her. Sidestilling av mennesket, dyret og industrien (oljå osv). Spennende veksling i form. Av og til nesten reindyrka sakprosa, og plutselig jambisk pentameter. Ikke kjent med denne typen «økopoesi», men syntes det var et interessant første møte.

[Younes Essahli]

Æ syns motstandslitteratur e litt eksotisk. Det distansere det Norge æ kjenne fra andre dela av verden. En smart fyr sa t mæ at det aldri har vært flere demonstrasjona enn det va på 2010-tallet. Klart det må kom frem i litteraturen.

[Francesca · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's All Good, It's All Fucked is an outstanding piece of writing that never fails to make me cry, so if this book only contained that it would be worth the price of admission alone.

[Taylor Franson-Thiel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unexpected and edgy.

[Austin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Approx 2.75 stars uncharitably rounded down to 2.

“She said your feed is all riots, plants, picnics, and poets. / It was an accusation. / She was noticing that I had got turnt. / And I said, my son, my son is in my feed too. / I didn’t bother to argue the riot with her.”

I believe that this book of poems has some literary value, and there are moments and juxtapositions that worked well for me, but I just can’t get over how corny and sentimental this supposedly radical work is. How tepid its political vision (protest is epic!), how flat its supposedly experimental poetics. I am never more Nietzschean than when I confront the phenomenon of people who actually love going to protests. It reminded me of this Socialism conference I went to years ago where the attendees were enthusiastically chanting slogans in the damn hotel ballroom for an hour before the keynote speaker came on. Truly bizarre stuff.

Where this book fails is in its offer of something new to say about Occupy, or indeed, protest in general. This book was published in 2015, years after Obama, the banks, and the cops joined together to shut it down. So what was this event (lower-case e) - this “Non-Revolution” that Spahr depicts (rather trivially imo) as a kind of lover with whom she is in a funky, perhaps poly, situationship? Obviously Occupy was enough of a threat to be treated as a message demanding a response - the response being its shut-down. Perhaps the threat was only to Obama’s image, which he has proven himself more dedicated to preserving than anything else on earth, including the earth itself. Beyond a neutralized threat to Obama’s cult of personality, what did Occupy do? That’s a genuine question I have. Maybe it helped open up the space that Bernie’s historic 2016 campaign would blow up wide, inviting the word ‘socialism’ back into public discourse from history’s dungeon, and which led to the increased space of left-democratic organizing since then. I’d sure like to think that Occupy was something more significant than an experience for activists to look back on, misty-eyed. Something between Burning Man and a Marxist reading group. But if Occupy was an Event, rather than an experience, I see no evidence of it in Spahr’s text. Maybe this is an unfair critique to levy against a book of poems, but I don’t think it is, considering the mission of the series and publisher, and of course the subject of the text itself.

Also, like, that scene where the 5-year-old is chanting “fuck the police” into a megaphone like it’s so fucking rad. And all this corny and questionable stuff about loving Michael Jackson. Actually, on the subject of children since I just wrote ‘Michael Jackson,’ there’s a buncha corny and screwy stuff about kids and ‘the next generation’ that comes up.

O God, please let me be a hater, even if an incoherent, uncharitable one - in my damn Goodreads reviews.

[Markus · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5, It's pretty good but sometimes her attitude or her writing style bug me

[diwili · Rating 5 out of 5]

The prose is my fav fav, the feels, the hyperlocal tidbits, the crossover and overlaps with my recollection of events. The Non-Revolution lives in me also.

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ville ikke logge denne før seminaret, for ville gi den en andre sjanse. Man må lese Spahrs forskning om politisk poesi for å forstå hva hun mener, og fordi samlingen er rettet mot en veldig spesifikk demonstrasjonsbevegelse i 2011 så klarte jeg ikke helt å henge med. Ingers lesning av "If You Were a Bluebird" var veldig interessant og fikk meg til å åpne øynene for denne utradisjonelle poesien som står som kontrast til Robert Frost og annen nasjonalistisk poesi som The Poetry Foundation fremmer.

[M.E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came across Commune Editions' new books from spending time in the small US left communist movement. Centered in the Bay Area and NYC, the left communist scene has offered some of the most intellectually dynamic analysis of recent years on global capitalism, the crisis of socialism and the relevance of mass protests. The intellectual creative richness, it turns out, has a counterpart in poetry. Commune Editions offers a particularly beautiful collection of radical leftist poetry. I've been avoiding poetry for most of recent years, tired of either slam poetry or formal avant-garde poetry. Commune Editions offers me a welcome return to the poetic form.

Commune Editions brings humor, formal innovation, and political substance. Periods of intense protest include experiences, new ways of looking at the world, and changed interpersonal relationships that are difficult to explain or understand. This poetry gets us part of the way there, beginning to map how capitalism appears from the spaces opened up in radical movements.

All of the above could apply to any of the handful of books put out by Commune Editions. Spahr, in particular, combines themes of ecological crisis, resource extraction industries, parenting and much else; describing a world of layered interdependence and violence. It's a fabulous read.

[Renee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books that should be in a college literary poem course- meaning I had very little idea what was going on at all times. Which is likely more a reflection of my inability to understand more non-linear poetry collections, rather than a reflection of the actual book. I feel like the parts and lines that I did understand (something about ecological damage, collective action, changing ideologies and lifestyles) meant there was some greater thread throughout, but I wasn't quite getting it.

And of course the winter reading challenge part of it all meant I didn't really have the time to go through it all line by line and then discuss with my poetry reading club, but I could see that being a much more enriching experience.

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good writer (rhythm and sound). But I didn’t like this very much. As one reviewer notes, she sounds “privileged,” like she’s romanticizing stuff and that’s never good. She sounds very detached—maybe a besetting sin of many poets. They get lost in their words and everything else suffers.

Maybe it’s just that I don’t like this style of poetry.

But I liked “Dynamic Positioning.”

[Didrik Nordtveit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dette e veldig bra!

Det e så masse insisterande litteratur der ute, så mye som ikkje balanserer form og innhold, og meiner mer enn de er. Her ser me kossen det går an å idealisera, samtidig som man beholde ein slags poetisk nerve.

Mennesket, natur og industri blir kje differensiert, men behandla som de like poetiske objektene som de er.

Eg vil drikka vin med Juliana Spahr, minst.

[anna marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

i rly rly loved most of this
but i did have an issue w some of the slang that was used in here bc it didnt feel right for the author to be using it? but i cried like 4 times lol
i love non-revolution too and i am so excited for the magnificent body of revolution to come too

[Mara Facon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard to describe these poems. The author herself suggests "movement poems", I think that's the most fitting I could come up with. Intimate, passionate, heavy. "It's All Good, It's All Fucked" stands out in particular, like a window into someone's life.

[Colin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just didn't feel like the format fit the words. I don't think it accomplishes what it set out to do. I wish it gave me more to say, but I left it feeling lack.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not for me.

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Deepwater Horizon gutted stem / To stern. What happens next ends with eleven // Dead.

[James Dweck · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Nicole Killian · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s All Good It’s All Fucked was my favorite piece followed by Turnt. Those are the pieces that will definitely stay with me.

[Gabi Aharonov · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my second time reading it, but wow does reading this in 2020 allow for a new level of understanding.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh. So much of this I loved. Especially “went looking and found coyotes”. Easy to see how this has become an oft taught eco poetry text.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book. I’m in awe at how Spahr can write so logically yet so emotionally at the same time (this sounds weird but if you read it, you’ll understand).

[Kai · Rating 5 out of 5]

the finesse of its power or affect is most "it's all good, it's all fucked " but it is, so, it is good

[Jacq Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoured this book of poetry in an environmental literature class in college. I continue to return to it.

[ev · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It may be that only through the minor can we feel the enormity” (16)

[det univokke]

Suk.