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, 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!

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.”

[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)

[Kelsey · Rating 2 out of 5]

This writing really didn't speak to me. Too bad.

[jade · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘The room will be dark. The light will be on in the hall. There will be shadows, in other words. And the singer will know about these shadows at this moment and know they had agreed to be with shadows when they had the child. They had gambled in a sense on a question of sustaining. They had agreed to exist from now on with a shadow. A shadow of love and a shadow of the burning of the oil fields that has already happened and is yet to come and yet must come and a million other shadows that might possibly disappear in the light at that moment’ (pp. 16-17).

[Mike Fridman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oddly detached poems about occupy wall street and environmental poems about oil stuff. This poetry is odd and sounds good enough.

[Craig Werner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wildy inconsistent, with some high points and long stretches that hit me as either prosaic or a tad contrived. But for all that, I respect what Spahr's trying to do, merge love poetry with a type of 21st century movement poetry that recognizes texting in all its refracted weirdness. My favorites were "Brent Crude" and "Dynamic Positioning," but the center of her vision is clearly "It's All Good, It's All Fucked." I've been reading a lot of poetry that veers into prose, clearly on purpose. Thinking about the implications of that, but in the meantime, I'm missing the intensities of language that define the poems I love most.

[Barbara Rhine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will not forget this book or its writer, because the intense poem/prose brought me to understand for the first time, the inside of a Black Bloc anarchist participant in current American political life. The scene is Occupy Oakland, but the context is totally interwoven with that of Big Oil, yearning for a more decent set of cultural values, the camaraderie of crazy--really, to me absolutely crazy--political actions. It's not too often a reader of my age and exposure can say I have learned something totally knew from a book that is not nonfiction, but this is that occasion. Pick it up and stick with it. You will have something gained that you cannot quite put into words...

[kell_xavi]

I picked this book up when it was assigned to a class in experimental feminist literature at my university, though I had no intention of taking the course. While each poem is dense, perhaps partial on its own, but perhaps also too many in its parts, the overall effect is politically and aesthetically strong.

[Kaisa Saarinen · Rating 2 out of 5]

i wanted to like this book because of the subject matter, but the style fell flat for me, especially the poetry. it seemed too self-important and some of the stylistic devices felt jarringly overused (especially constructs like 'sometimes x is y. sometimes it is not'). i still liked some of the prose sections though.