Poetry Imposes Order in Times of Chaos

Author: Claire Bourne

The collapse of the New York City skyline and the devastation incurred at the Pentagon on the crisp, blue morning of Sept. 11 left many speechless. Some, however, soon found a voice by picking up a pen and jotting down thoughts on paper. Words turned into phrases and phrases into poetry. Elementary school children wrote. College students wrote. Businessmen and women wrote. Poets of all ages, races and faiths found solace in the written word — not just in writing it but in reading it as well.

If, as Robert Frost once said, poetry is "a momentary stay against confusion," then the aftermath of the Sept. 11 crisis was poetry's greatest test.

As the nation and the world began to digest the events that unraveled that day, various radio commentators and television talking heads turned to W. H. Auden's poem "September 1, 1939" (see inset) to make sense of what happened and how the world was reacting.

"It was not for nothing that we heard endlessly Auden's poem," D.E. Axinn Professor of Creative Writing Jay Parini pointed out. "It talks about a period when there was chaos. The world was on the brink of World War II, and it looked like Europe and the whole world was collapsing."

Auden's words eerily echo the paradoxical sense of helplessness and resolve that followed Sept. 11: "Defenseless under the night / Our world in stupor lies; / Yet, dotted everywhere, / Ironic points of light / Flash out wherever the Just / Exchange their messages: / May I, composed like them / Of Eros and of dust, / Beleaguered by the same / Negation and despair, / Show an affirming flame."

For many poets, "show[ing] an affirming flame" meant channeling rage, sorrow, despair and vulnerability into a structured medium. Crystal Belle '04, a New York City resident, said she immediately sat down and began to write poetry after learning of the attacks. In her trademark free verse style, she coupled her emotions with her creative energy to produce "The Trade of Our World" (see page 30).

"I had mixed feelings about what had happened," she explained. On the one hand, she was shocked that the unscarred city she had left behind just two days earlier was "changed forever." On the other hand, she could not help but wonder whether these terrorist acts were "payback" for what "we've been doing … to other nations for so long." Belle commented that writing poetry was not only therapeutic but that it also provided her with a vehicle through which to express her political views. "I'm not afraid to say how I feel," she affirmed.

Parini, who spent last week in Cairo at a conference of Arab writers, relayed the message of Nobel Prize-winning writer Naguib Mahfouz, who told him that greatness in writing was more about circumstances than about the writer. "Societies in crisis often elicit great writing from their people," he elucidated.

"When a society is in a time of crisis, people look for controlled responses in language," Parini said. "In the wake of 9/11 there was tremendous disorder. Poetry is a rage against chaos and an attempt to come to terms with difficult experiences," he continued.

Since Sept. 11, Parini has written one poem relating directly to the attacks entitled "After the Terror." He chose to write a villanelle, a 19-line formal poem with strict rhyming and repetition patterns, in order to harness the "powerful emotions" he felt. "I had a lot of emotions that were chaotic, and that poem was suddenly like entering a clearing," he said.

Although relatively few poems about Sept. 11 and its repercussions have been published in touchstone literary fora such as The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly, Parini predicted that more pieces in response to the crisis would emerge in the coming months. "Things like this take time to process," he said. "You can't control, you can't predict art. It happens when it happens. It's just one of those mysteries."

From middle school students who pinned their poetic tributes to makeshift monuments in downtown Manhattan to established poets who have published their pieces in notable magazines, all writers of poetry who have responded to this generation-defining moment have helped to stage a "momentary stay" against the chaos that erupted suddenly on that brisk morning in September.