The American Century: Literature since 1945 825As “The Approaching War” illustrates, one reason for the feeling of impotence,
even exhaustion, that characterizes some of the more polemical 9/11 poems is the
suspicion that all this has happened before. Not only do terrorist and counterterrorist
mirror each other, the sense is, the war between them also mirrors other, earlier
wars. “Collateral Damage” (2003) by John Balaban (1943–), “Army Burn Ward”
(2003) by Martin Galvin (1933–), and “Twelve Meditations” (2001) by Emily
Borenstein (1923–), for instance, all invite a comparison with the war in Vietnam.
“The Way of It” (2001) by Ruth Stone (1915–) and “Fairy Tale” (2001) by Ai go back
for a potential mirror of the contemporary crisis to World War II; in “To the Forty-
third President of the United States of America” (2003), William O’Daly goes further
back to World War I; and in “House of Xerxes” (2002), Paul Violi (1944–2011) goes
even further back to the ancient wars of the Persians, Assyrians, and others – “Today
we’re making history / ,” he sardonically concludes, “We’re raising cane.” “How many
times,” Shirley Kaufman (1923–) asks in “Cyclamen” (2002), while intimating that
“the ... efficiency / that kills” is inexhaustible. “Once more the urge / to be alone in
a rented car,” C. D. Wright (1949–) laments in “Once Again the Old Urge to Be Alone
in a Car No Matter Where the Local Roads Are Going” (2003): the urge, that is, to
light out from the awful inevitable cycle of wars following wars into a world
elsewhere, “waking up in the full sun / ... minimally deluded / it would all stop.”
“For Christ’s sake: Hold your fire!” Wright concludes, switching from the desire to
escape to a cry that hovers between demand and prayer. The switch, however, only
emphasizes the sense of despair. In “The Hearth” (2003), C. K. Williams (1936–)
offers a quieter meditation on the remorseless recurrence of warfare. During a
moment “alone with the news” of impending battle, Williams discloses, he threw a
“plastic coffee cup” on to the fire. Beginning with this homely image, the poet then
reflects on other kinds of destruction: a man he knew who was “caught in a fire,”
an owl descending through the dark on its prey. Intimations of fire, descent, and
darkness then lead into the heart of the poem: the thought of imminent warfare,
“radar, rockets, shrapnel, / cities razed.” The route may be more circuitous than in
Wright’s poem, but the destination is not so different. By the end of the poem, the
poet can only wonder “how those with power over us / can effect such things” and
seek shelter from the storm of warfare by choosing to “crouch closer” to the fire.
A retreat into the warmth of hearth and home seems no more viable, in this climate
of gathering conflict, than escape on the open road “in a rented car.” Neither Wright
nor Williams, in the end, can find genuine comfort in a private space. The personal
is there in both poems but it is a source of cold comfort if, as both poems suggest,
it is indelibly linked to the public. There is no real hope here of a separate peace.
Despair shades into rage in some post-9/11 poems; a sense of impotence shifts
into an implicit belief in the power of the poet as truthteller. Drawing on a tradition
of poetic populism that goes back through William Carlos Williams and Carl
Sandburg to Walt Whitman, some poets use simple speech and expansive rhythms
to address their fellow citizens and teach them about the current crisis. Whitman is
even invoked by a few of them. “Come back, Walt Whitman, we need you in the hour
of our grief,” Norbert Crapf (1943–) begins “Elegy” from “Three PaumanokGGray_c05.indd 825ray_c 05 .indd 825 8 8/1/2011 7:31:47 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 47 PM