(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–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.
describe this flight
and not add a last line.
