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Photograph from September 11th-Wislawa Szymborska

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This poem is describing the infamous photo of an unidentified man who jumped from the Twin Towers before they collapsed. What hits a chord is the third stanza that says:

“Each is still complete

with a particular face

and blood well-hidden.”

I just can’t imagine what a body looks like after falling that many stories. Szymborska is describing the body that is falling using what it looks like after it has hit the ground. She uses the negative to create an image of both the before and after-math of the jump. The 4th stanza elongates the time frame of the jump and really puts into perspective how long it took for the man to fall,

“There’s enough time

for hair to come loose,

for keys and coins

to fall from pockets.”

I can’t imagine what the man is thinking to himself, his death was definitely not a swift one, there must have been so many thoughts racing through his mind. The poet also exudes hopeless and wishes she could have done more. Szymborska wants to leave the ending unsaid for these jumpers, she only wants to describe this flight. Szymborska wants to keep them in flight, to keep their memories alive. Flight is usually used to describe a plane ready for take-off, but not in this case. The jumpers are in flight, however, it is a descending flight to their deaths, and the use is not describing a plane but rather a person. The plane in this scenario has ended its flight but the person is just in the midst of theirs.

 

On Szymborska – sample post

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(Here is a short reflection I have to Szymborska’s very raw poem on 9/11. Please note my use of tags as thematic markers so that you can reuse what you need and add more if there is no tag suitable already. Also note how I’ve categorized it both as “poetry” and as “week 2”)

Photograph from September 11 – Wislawa Szymborska

This poem struck me in a way that is not always possible when reading something. I can’t say whether it’s because I remember so clearly because I was your age, 18 and a 1st year college student, when 9/11 destroyed what we thought we knew about being American, or because the words are just so raw.

I instantly understand what the poet is seeing, the images of desperate people flinging themselves from the towers that flashed on the news for months and months.

What strikes me most of all about this poem is the connection she draws between the power of this writing and the photographic image: suspension. The photo froze them all above the ground, not yet dead. This resonates for me with where she stops her remembering: 
I can only do two things for them–
describe this flight
and not add a last line.
Like the harrowing images from 9/11, Symborska has frozen the now-dead before death–holding on to them in a space where we we can see and remember.