Repetition: Snap Shot Criticism

In Juliana Spahr’s Fuck You-Aloha-I Love You most of the poems are full lines repeated over and over to drive home meaning. In the poem “Switching,” Spahr inserts the line “In a room we sit at a round table” (1) repeatedly throughout the 22-page poem. She does this to reinforce images of community. She uses the word “we” over 60 times as well. Yet, for all the epic size of the poem, the meaning is clear in two lines, “As touching, gathering happens/in the most difficult places at the/most difficult times” (103-105). Community is built out of strife and hardship in the most organic way: when it is needed most.

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