The American Century: Literature since 1945 821and found for a moment by Miranda Beeson (1960–) in “Flight” (2002). The poet
recalls or imagines how, on the day the Twin Towers fell, an “iridescent exhausted
finch” found its way to her home, having apparently survived the attack. Somehow,
she sadly reflects, “the survival of this slight speck / of feathered imperfection”
appeared “more important than anything else:” more important, even, than the man
“in his business suit / who fell through the air without / the benefit of wings.” Poems
like these offer “cover” of a kind, perhaps, in wishful thinking or wonder at a small
miracle of survival. But the cover is only partial and, in the long run, illusory. “You
can grieve a long time,” Bill Kushner (1956–) confides in “Friends” (2002). And all
these poems, in their different ways, are acknowledgments of that sad fact, and
announcements of grief. They commemorate by trying to turn what Hugh Seidman
(1940–) in “New York” (2002) calls “the involuntary wail / that changes soul” into
articulate speech.
“Ground Zero” (2002) by Robert Creeley is also a memorial poem, but of a very
different kind. What it maps, as its title implies, is the bleak impersonality, the
vacancy of loss. The scarred, empty landscape left by the destruction of the Twin
Towers becomes a visual equivalent of trauma, the moral and emotional vacuum
that opens up after a moment of crisis. And it maps it mostly by indirection and
stealth. The language is terse and anonymous, the spaces between the words
appearing to be as eloquent as the words themselves. The verbal music, in turn, is
plangent. This is a verbal tapestry of mourning that is as remarkable for what it
leaves unsaid as for what it actually says. As such, it is symptomatic of two vital
tendencies in these poems of commemoration, to do with verbal and visual absence.
In “To the Words” (2001), W. S. Merwin addresses the instruments of his trade as
poet and dismisses them as “ancient precious / and helpless ones.” That is a common
theme. “I cannot imagine,” complains Kimiko Hahn in “In the Armory” (2001), as
he thinks of those searching for their loved ones after 9/11, “It is too much.” “Words
are so small. Words have no weight, / ” Elizabeth Spires (1952–) confesses in “The
Beautiful Day” (2001), “And nothing will ever be the same.” Perhaps the unspeakable
cannot be spoken, these poems suggest; perhaps the horrors of 9/11 and after can
only be imagined on the borders of language, a verbal absence inscribing a human
one. Or, alternatively, as other poems intimate and “Ground Zero” demonstrates, an
appropriate measure of loss is empty space, a visual vacancy. “All you have to do is /
look up and it’s not there,” observes David Lehman (1948–) in “14/9/01” (2001): “it”
being what Nancy Mercado (1975–), in “Going to Work” (2001), calls the “twin
ghosts” of the World Trade Center towers. In “Blackout” (2001), Jonah Bornstein
(1959–) takes the darkness alluded to in the title as a metaphor for the “world
shadowy / and silent” that came into being with the collapse of those towers. Bart
Edelman (1951–), in “Empty Rooms” (2001), focuses on a more domestic form of
vacancy: the empty spaces, the rooms and cupboards “where yesterday’s clothes
hung” before the victims of terrorism “vanished.” While in “View Interrupted”
(2001), Ann Lolordo (1970–) returns the reader to Ground Zero: the “twin shadows”
of the Towers are “replaced by light,” she tells the reader, an “uninterrupted view” to
the Empire State Building “is what you see.” “We cannot live in Eden anymore,”GGray_c05.indd 821ray_c 05 .indd 821 8 8/1/2011 7:31:47 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 47 PM