We

     Juliana Spahr’s poem “Some of We and the Land That Was Never Ours” was almost meaningless to me the first time I read it. After reading it I was left with a vague general impression and a lot of questions. After reading the “Sonnets” I wish she had swapped their position in the book. 

In the poem “Some of We and the Land That Was Never Ours” “we” is broadly defined. Spahr writes, “We of all the small ones are.” However this is followed by “We are all. We are in this world”(11). This is vague and the defining of “we” gets broader with each line. For me “the small ones” indicates a minority, but what minority is not clear. She could be speaking about locals, natives or just Hawaiians in general as Hawaii itself is an incredibly small part of the world in comparison to other parts of the world or even just to other states of the Union. The next two lines (quoted above) broaden the “we.” Or at least lends itself to be interpreted in several ways which can alter, complicate and deepen the meaning of the poem. Later Spahr writes, “Some of we and the land that was never ours while we were the land’s.” Again this narrows down “we” and adds the complexity of colonialism and land issues that we have talked about in class. Still, this could be settlers in Hawaii, tourists, natives or more. 

When I look at the “Sonnets” the “we” is more clearly illuminated and helps lend an understanding to the other poem. The first line of “Sonnets” is “We arrived” later the speaker says, “ We arrived over the islands and we saw the green of them/ out the window” (19). The speaker tells us they are coming to Hawaii from another place. The amount of people is unspecified but at least now the reader is aware that the “we” consists of people coming into Hawaii from another land. This narrows the “we” down to tourists, settlers or foreigners in general. With that in mind you can go back to the previous poem and understand it according to that. In doing so a theme of Americanization and colonialism is revealed. Tracing what the “we” represents in different poems illuminates themes throughout all her poems which (for me) were more difficult to see when reading the “Some of We and the Land That Was Never Ours” on its own without the “Sonnets.”

~Matina Tryforos