Editorial receptions of what is now known as “9/11 Poetry” have traveled the teeter-totter of embracement and disgust. Some publishers consider ink to be a feeble retort to magnanimous grief; others consider a quill the only temperate feather we own in processing such a universal tragedy. As a writer, I hesitated to take a stand, fearing my stanzas would be labeled a travesty in the context of such sadness, a tacky and opportunistic ploy for the attention of readers. It didn’t take me long to shed that cloak of fear when my sense of urgency emerged. I was not writing to build up the biceps of imperialism; I was writing to survive and learn. It was the only oar I owned that could cope with the size of these waves.

The writing process itself these past few months has taught me a great deal about where I stand in relation to grief as well as the complex issue of patriotism. Shortly after 9/11/2001, Amercian flags literally came out of our closets and attics and wrappers in stores. Emotionally, I saw these patriotic gestures as a sign of engagement, tinged with anger, but engagement nevertheless. If I look honestly at the blossoming of this symbol, it is a mixed blessing. While it demonstrates respect and involvement, ideally we should be pinning the flags of every nation around the world to our homes and to our cars. Our concerns should be global rather than national. Few would argue the fact that a battlefield is the quicksand of death and bombs are instruments of annihilation, not peace. The question then becomes how freedom can be salvaged and protected from the omnipresent facts of terror and mass murder. Insulation is never the answer; while I take pride in the spirit of America, I see a flag, any flag, as a singular symbol of potentially limited concern.

If I am not being naive, I sense that American poetry is responding to a literary call to arms with a complex duel of emotion fueled by the fall of the towers in New York City and the attack on the Pentagon in the same way Langston Hughes used verse to attack racial discrimination. Poetry and politics have always been Siamese twins. In October of 1963, at the opening of the Robert Frost Library in his last major public appearance, John F. Kennedy said: “When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.” Even in 1963, in response to other threats to Democracy, Kennedy was calling on art to be more than a relief valve to let the steam of anger out. He was labeling poets as a catalyst for social change, a tool for humanity at large. This is our responsibility as thinkers and writers.

Much of my 9/11 poetry began as the “stung cheek” of grief, an urn in which to bury the ashes of our dead. It is now our duty to rebuild the dream without forgetting the lingering sadness on city streets, a signal that our spirit has been burned and there are lessons, formidable ones, in the context of this ash.

Not long after the towers in New York City fell, The Pedestal Magazine ran a special issue on the terrorist attacks and the world’s reply to this horrendous tragedy. John Amen, senior editor of Pedestal, chose an even 100 poets from around the globe: “On September 12th, I was trying to polish up some of my own manuscripts and organize the October issue. I quickly found that it was next to impossible to engage myself in these quotidian tasks, these chores that seemed trivial in the light of what had just happened. I was compelled, instinctively perhaps, to find some way, no matter how insignificant, to connect with the destruction that had taken place in New York. This was probably my primary purpose in creating the September 11th issue: to experience, or at least attempt to experience, some sense of intimacy with the catastrophic sublimity of that day. Another perhaps slightly more ancillary purpose was to create a vessel that could ‘contain’ the Thanatos of the day, something that could permanently mirror both the tragedy and the subsequent mass (international) response. Not to compare the events of September 11 to the Holocaust, but I do recall that I kept thinking, ‘there are people who deny that the Holocaust even happened.’ If it weren’t for photographs, writings, and first-hand accounts, who knows, eventually we (yes, I say ‘we,’ you and I) might become convinced that it was little more than a ghastly myth, some sort of hyperbolized fairy tale.”

The day after the attacks, I scoured The New Yorker for essays and perspectives. While the prose of John Updike and others were helpful in processing the shock and the sadness, I came away from those essays feeling as though the journey of grief had just begun. As a writer and feeler, I needed to know how others were dealing with grief, outrage, and loss. In “American Air,” Wendy Carlisle writes: “What I know for sure/is a short list: in October/There is no warning of the weather/except the weather...” In “Paint Over This Poem,” Cathy McArthur says: “city poem of red./ Face it, then--/paint over it ...” Poems like these were my salve and my inspiration. Pedestal filled a gaping void that headlines in the evening news only seemed to be widening and salting with the rapidly escalating body counts.

What Amen offered the world was a diary of grief from all angles and an opportunity for readers and writers to engage in this cathartic dialogue. To read that issue was to literally sift through the ash on New York streets and the rebounding rumble on every corner of a global map. As Amen pointed out, his gravest fear was that without blunt and emotive art the world would be too quick to return to some complacent routine. He went fishing under the ice for a true r sense of the sea, regardless of the chill, regardless of the risk.

PageONE was another site to which I returned again and again in an effort to garner perspective on the tragedies of 9/11. Essays by such reknowned writers as Dave Barry, William Hazelgrove, and John Weaver helped America connect with the magnitude of its grief. The nuts and bolts of emotion were tempered with a rational conversation that offered substance for the rebirth of hope, and the coverage of issues was by no means limited to interests of one country on the world map.

Poignant art is nearly always unsettling. I had a teacher in graduate school who always explained the creative process as an onion; she suggested we peel away the skin to get to the heart. This seems particularly relevant to the events of last year. Poetry can slice, chop, and dice the core; we need to do it, whether it stings our eyes or not. I am ashamed to say this, but writing about pending war put me in touch with the gravity of my apathy. Before 9/11/2001, I saw burkas as a fairly innocent piece of cloth, an unnecessary cloak which was heavy and coarse, but just clothing nevertheless that amounted to a brand of culturally-enforced modesty. Writing about the plights of women in Afghanistan cemented my own sense of liberation and brought into a clearer light the many simple freedoms I have taken for granted.

I hesitated to publish my work about the women in Afghanistan, because I felt I had no right to shed feeble and second-hand illumination on the body of their struggles, none of which I had experienced myself. Writers worry that they are stepping on foreign soil, that they are invading a sacred pasture when they explore someone else’s grief. But that step is how the world grows more unified regardless of the pain in the awkward stride. Writing, in a small way, landed me on Afghan soil, took me into their homes, and opened my eyes to injustice and oppression. Reading what other poets and essayists had to say took me even closer to the center of their horrors; I had no choice but to grow more compassionate and aware.

A Smothered Woman’s Estrogen

“Take care my sister. Tell Americans this horror
is not what Palestinian women want.
Your nightmares and our own are now the same.”
--Arwa (from The Quote Quilt)

Behind her shroud,
a smothered woman’s estrogen
is coming to the boiling point.
Identities stripped blank and black.
The hideous, this megrim
and cafard of hate
pressed like blades on ivory necks.
Numbers of your missing faces
mirror ours. Calligraphy we are,
unread.

Evil’s roots aren’t tweezeable
without your fingers on the prongs.
We live in corsets of their fear
personified by turbans
wrapped around a snake.
Still twitching ‘til we shoot it twice.
We were born inside this war.
Wombs of terror are all we know.
If we rise, we’ll need your hands.

The poet’s voice inside her breath
I never felt across my cheek
until its acid met my luck.
Her silence should have wakened me,
but I have never worn her clothes.
Behind her shroud,
a smothered woman’s estrogen
is coming to the boiling point.
I ignored the overspill
until it landed on our soil.