The Permanent Legacy of Fatal Contact as seen in Spahr’s “Dole Street”

Within the “Dole Street” section of Juliana Spahr’s Well Then There Now there is one elegantly poignant declaration that shines through, almost as the thesis of the section: “But the names of the streets and buildings and schools and parks always tell a history.  And in this sense, Dole Street is another poem about bad history” (40).  Spahr unpacks this simple statement, as the rest of this section/chapter unfolds, through an examination of the many streets that intersect Dole Street.

            As Spahr details in the many sub-sections that follow the interesting declaration listed above, “only four streets that intersect Dole Street have Hawaiian names [despite the fact that] 86% of places names in Hawaii are Hawaiian names” (40).  There is Wilder Street, and Farrington Street, and Metcalf Street, and Oliver Street, and Spreckels Street, all of which are named after Haole men of power, either economically or politically, who gain their power at the expense of the Native Hawaiian population or their land/environment.  In this sense while people refer to the actual places on the Hawaiian Islands with Hawaiian names, Haole’s still control the actual demarcation of space on the Hawaiian Islands, as they have since the establishment of the missions and the plantations.

            Spahr realizes that “in this sense, Dole [Street] is the spine of the reddish centipede” that has lodged itself deep within Hawaiian landscape (40).  The “carnivorous” Haole came to the Hawaiian Islands with its "chewing mouthparts and legs modified into poison claws” and carved his place into the landscape at the expense of the Native Hawaiian population (40-41).  And the Haole “bite” left a “permanent black mark” on not only the Hawaiian landscape, which is evident today in the chosen “names of streets and buildings and schools and parks,” but also in the hearts and minds of the Native Hawaiian people (40).