Towards a Collective Memorial: American Poetry After the Attacks on the World Trade Center, NYC

Year 2020, Issue: 53, 35 - 60, 01.05.2020

Seda Şen

Abstract

The destruction of the World Trade Center buildings during
the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 have been used in poems
written in response to the attacks by various poets as a means of
coming to terms with the events. The poems discussed in this article
may be regarded not only as a way of documenting the events but also
as a way of creating commemorative spaces. By means of reproducing
the striking visual images of the attacks, especially those broadcasted
on television, the poems seem to illustrate multi-voiced responses to
the attacks and provide a space for commemoration as alternatives to
the physical memorials like Reflecting Absence and One World Trade
Center. In other words, the poems share similar characteristics to
monuments and create a medium for healing from the trauma. The aim
of this article is to study the poetic responses to the collapsing of the
World Trade Center buildings and the ways in which the buildings are
symbolically rebuilt in the lines of poetry as an act of commemoration.

Keywords

September 11, 2001, American Poetry and September 11 Attacks, Poetic Memorialization, Word-monument, Poetic Monument, Digital Poetry

References

• Alexander, Meena. “Late, There was an Island (A Poem Cycle),” Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/911poetry/. Accessed 30 December 2018.
• Alkalay-Gut, Karen. “The Poetry of September 11: The Testimonial Imperative,” Poetics Today, vol. 26, no. 2 (Summer 2005), pp. 257-279.
• Clark, Mary Marshall. “The September 11, 2001, Oral History Narrative and Memory Project: A First Report.” History and September 11th. Edited by Joanne Meyerowitz. Philadelphia, Temple UP, 2003, pp. 117-130.
• Cleary, Scott. “A Bird in the Hand: Aesthetics and Capital in the Anthology Poetry After 9/11,” Terror in Global Narrative: Representations of 9/11 in the Age of Late Capitalism, edited by George Fragopoulos and Liliana M. Naydan, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 77- 91.
• Collins, Billy. “The Names.” 2002. Poem Hunter, https://www. poemhunter.com/poem/the-names-3/. Accessed 28 March 2017. Cooley, Nicole. “Poetry of Disaster.” Poets.org. Accessed 10 October 2018.
• Cvek, Sven. Towering Figures: Reading the 9/11 Archive. New York, Rodopi, 2011.
• Fraenkel, Béatrice. “Catastrophe Writings: In the Wake of September 11,” Visible Writings: Cultures, Forms, Readings, edited by Marija Dalbello and Mary Shaw, Rutgers UP, 2011, pp. 305-318.
• Gardner, James B. and Sarah M. Henry. “September 11 and the Mourning After: Reflections on Collecting and Interpreting the History of Tragedy,” The Public Historian, vol. 24, no. 3 (Summer 2002), pp. 37-52, https://www. jstor.org/stable/10.1525/ tph.2002.24.3.37.
• Goodes, Pamela A. “Libraries Commemorate 10th Anniversary of 9/11 Attacks,” American Libraries, vol. 42, no. 9-10 (September/October 2011), pp. 26-27, https://www. jstor.org/ stable/23025311.
• Gumpert, Matthew and Susan J. Drucker. “Heartbreak Written on the Landscape: Public Memorials and Remembering the Attack on the World Trade Center.” Journal of American Studies of Turkey, no. 14, 2001, pp. 61-74.
• Harjo, Joy. “When the World as We Knew It Ended.” Poetry Foundation. Accessed 29 March 2016.
• Holman, Bob et al. “Tower One.” Peoples Poetry Gathering, https://web. archive.org/web/20120306144919/http://www.peoplespoetry. org/pg_spotlighttwr.html. Accessed 30 March 2019.
• Holman, Bob et al. “Tower Two.” Peoples Poetry Gathering, https://web.archive.org/web/20120306144919/http://www. peoplespoetry.org/pg_spotlighttwr.html. Accessed 30 March 2019.
• Hudspith, Vicki. “Nodding Cranes.” Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets. Edited by Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians. New York, Melville House Publishing, 2002.
• Jackson, Shelly. “9/11 and the Numberless New Yorks.” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/68665/9- 11-and-the-numberless-new-yorks. Accessed 11 May 2019.
• Katz, Eliot. “When the Skyline Crumbles.” Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets. Edited by Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians. New York, Melville House Publishing, 2002.
• Keniston, Ann. “‘Not Needed, Except as Meaning’: Belatedness in Post-9/11 American Poetry,” Contemporary Literature, vol. 52, no. 4, American Poetry, 2000-2009 (Winter 2011), pp. 658-683, JSTOR, https://www. jstor.org/stable/41472490.
• Kimberley, Emma. “Politics and Poetics of Fear after 9/11: Claudia Rankine’s ‘Don’t Let Me Be Lonely’,” Journal of American Studies, vol. 45, no. 4, 10 Years After 9/11 (November 2011), pp. 777-791, https://www. jstor.org/stable/41427299.
• Leach, Neil. “9/11,” Diacritics, vol. 33, no. 3-4, New Coordinates: Spatial Mappings, National Trajectories (Autumn-Winter, 2003), pp 75-92, https://www. jstor.org/stable/3805805.
• Luger, Moberley. “Poetry as Monument: Jenny Holzer and the Memorial Poems of 9/11.” Memory Studies, vol. 8, no. 2, 2014. Online edition 1 April 2015, pp. 1-14.
• Mercado, Nancy. “Going to Work.” Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets. Edited by Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians. New York, Melville House Publishing, 2002.
• Myles, Eileen. “Flowers.” Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets. Edited by Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians. New York, Melville House Publishing, 2002.
• Ostriker, Alicia. “Introduction: Poetry After 9/11.” Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets. Edited by Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians. New York, Melville House Publishing, 2002.
• Randall, Martin. 9/11 and the Literature of Terror. Edinburgh, Edinburgh UP, 2014.
• Redfield, Mark. “Virtual Trauma: The Idiom of 9/11,” Diacritics, vol. 37, no. 1 (Spring 2007), pp. 54-80, https://www. jstor.org/ stable/20204157.
• Roza, Mathilde. “‘America Under Attack’: Unity and Division after 9/11,” American Multiculturalism after 9/11: Transatlantic Perspectives, edited by Derek Rubin and Jaap Verheul, Amsterdam University Press, 2009, pp. 105-117, https://www. jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n1tg.10.
• Savage, Kirk. “Trauma, Healing, and the Therapeutic Monument.” Terror, Culture, Politics: Rethinking 9/11. Edited by Daniel Sherman and Terry Nardin. Bloomington, Indiana UP, 2006, pp. 103-120.
• Simpson, David. 9/11: The Culture of Commemoration. Chicago, Chicago UP, 2006.
• Sturken, Marita. “Memorializing Absence.” Social Sciences Research Center, http://essays.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/sturken/htm. Accessed 11 May 2019.
• Veselá, Pavla. “A Highly Charged Pronoun: ‘We’ in Three September 11 Poems,” Poetics Today, vol. 33, no. 2 (Summer 2012) pp. 217-240, doi 10.1215/03335372-1586590.
• Yau, John. “Making Poetry Public.” 6 September 2006. The Poetry Foundation. Accessed 11 May 2019.