A History of American Literature

816 The American Century: Literature since 1945

But Pugilist Specialist resists a “narrative arch” of this kind. It deconstructs the

“strong,” monolithic narratives of nationalism and substitutes for them the dramatic

language of illegibility and indeterminacy – a language that actively challenges the

discourse, the story on which notions of “military victory” are based. Interrogating

the “war on terror” in general and the invasion of Iraq and pursuit of Saddam

Hussein in particular, Pugilist Specialist is at once one of the subtlest and one of the

most subversive of those plays that try to address the post-9/11 crisis: taking its

characters, and its audience, into a landscape where ignorant armies clash by night.

Writing the crisis in poetry

“Politics kills poetry,” wrote Tim Scannell (1963–) before launching into an attack

on what he saw as the politicization of cultural activity in general and poetry in

particular. Scannell was talking in broad terms about what he believed was a sinister

development: the relentless growth of “ideological coilings which throttle” poetic

activity. But he was writing in 2002; and there is no doubt that this gave his argument

a peculiar resonance. That resonance was picked up by, among others, another poet,

Daniela Gioseffi (1947–), who retorted, “Many of us do not wish to write merely ‘art

for art’s sake’ – especially after the ‘blow-back’ of 9/11!” The relationship between

poetry and politics has always been a problematic one. On the one hand, there are

those who argue that poetry, being a human activity, is inseparable from community,

society, and so from politics. On the other, there are those who argue that the sources

of poetry are prehistorical, presocietal, and that the individual voice stands apart

from, even in resistance to, politics in its own musical space. A subtler variation on

this debate is offered by those who insist that the poet attends, first and last, to

language but, in doing so, performs an essentially political act, since language,

perception, and the construction of our social lives are intertwined. Building on this,

there are also those who suggest that, in attending to and renewing the language, the

poet is in effect interrogating and subverting the dominant political rhetoric – or

what Ezra Pound called “the fogged language of the swindling classes.” But although

the debate over the relationship between poetry and politics has always been there,

it has certainly acquired a new edge and relevance with the terrorist attacks and the

“war on terror.” As various observers announced an “end to irony” (which appeared

to be shorthand for literary indirection), poets found themselves challenged more

than ever to reveal exactly where they stood in that debate – and, in doing so, to

respond to the simple question of how to write poetry after 9/11.

Three different answers to that question are given by three poems written in

response to the attack on the World Trade Center: “Curse” (2002) by Frank Bidart,

“Somebody Blew Up America” (2001) by Amiri Baraka, and “Alabanza: In Praise of

Local 100” (2003) by Martín Espada (1957–). “Curse” is addressed to those who

brought down the Twin Towers. It is a beautifully cadenced cry of rage. The poem

ends by declaring, “Out of the great secret of morals, the imagination to enter/ the

skin of another, what I have made is a curse.” The aim here is to get under the skin,

certainly, but not in order to search out motives, to try to find out why the terrorists

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