Fuck You-Aloha-I Love You

"Juliana Spahr's method bears some comparison to that of Ludwig Wittgenstein. It is premised on a daringly aggressive ambivalence, one that is obvious in the goodbye-hello message of the book's title but becomes far more complicated as the poems' sequences query feature after feature of the author's cultural locale. The works are of necessity skeptical in tone, but they are also deeply emotional; they are about engagement. They give an account of confrontations but stand as gestures of acknowledgment. This is one of the most emotionally intelligent books I have read in a long time. The works are profound."—Lyn Hejinian, author of The Language of Inquiry

"An understated, careful examination of the individual in the troubled nexus of the law, community, culture, and, centrally, language . . . continues [Spahr's] search for the verbal means to realize others without resort to an identity-based voice. She succeeds brilliantly with 'a younger man, an older man, and a woman,' one of four long sequences here . . . [the] tension between the black heart of anger and faith in community makes this a distinct, ambitious book of poems."—Publishers Weekly

"The more I read through Spahr's work, the more interested I am in reading further, and deeper"—Rob McLennan, Rob McLennan's blog