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Poetry After 9/11: Constructing the Memory of Crisis

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Poetry After 9/11: Constructing the Memory of Crisis POETRY AFTER 9/11: CONSTRUCTING THE MEMORY OF CRISIS by MOBERLEY LUGER B.A. (Hons.), The University of British Columbia, 2002 M.A., Concordia University, 2004 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (English) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) December 2010 © Moberley Luger, 2010 Abstract My dissertation examines the cultural functions of poetry in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. After 9/11, poems could be found in many and unexpected places: they were posted on the internet in the tens of thousands; published in newspapers, magazines, and single-author books; read aloud on television and on radio and collected in at least ten anthologies. Seeking to explain this surge in poetry’s popularity, many critics have discussed the genre’s ability to provide comfort. I suggest that poems after 9/11 be seen also as examples of memory scholar Marita Sturken’s “technologies of memory”: politically-charged objects through which memories are shared, produced, and given meaning. I argue that poetry can be held accountable for its production of the memory of 9/11 and that it can be investigated for the multiple functions it serves in the aftermath of crisis. Using the resources of memory studies, and of cultural studies of poetry, my dissertation makes a case for poetry’s political, memorial, witness, and public-discourse functions. My chapters explore (1) the popularity of W.H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939” after 9/11 and the contemporary politics of the poem’s circulation; (2) the memorial function of poetry as that function is negotiated in a text installation in the newly-built 7 World Trade Centre; (3) the function of poetry as witness and the way the mediation of 9/11 invites a reconsideration of the witness position itself; and (4) the public-discourse function of poetry found, for example, at poetry.com, where 55, 031 people have uploaded their 9/11 poems. By studying poetry’s national presence after 9/11, I challenge the idea, dominant especially since the mid-twentieth century, that poetry is a marginal genre in literature and culture. I also challenge the mid-twentieth century notion that poetry’s value can best be found in its timelessness. Poetry had many timely functions after 9/11 and can be read as a set of discursive practices integrated in our everyday lives. ii Table of Contents Abstract............................................................................................................................................ii Table of Contents............................................................................................................................iii Acknowledgements..........................................................................................................................v Dedication.......................................................................................................................................vi Introduction: Reading Poetry after 9/11 ...........................................................................................1 Responding to the Archive ...................................................................................................5 Remembering 9/11 .............................................................................................................14 Critical Contexts ................................................................................................................17 Chapter Overview...............................................................................................................28 Concluding the Introduction ..............................................................................................31 Chapter One: “September 1, 1939” on September 11, 2001..........................................................34 Critical Conversations: Auden as Timely...........................................................................41 A Record of World War Two ..............................................................................................47 “September 1, 1939” on September 11, 2001 ....................................................................57 Poetry as Kitsch .................................................................................................................65 The Politics of Quotation ...................................................................................................69 Chapter Two: “For 7 World Trade”: Poetry as Forgetting, Poetry as Memory ..............................76 A History of Memorials .....................................................................................................84 Poetry as Memorial ............................................................................................................92 “For 7 World Trade”.........................................................................................................100 The Politics of Forgetting ................................................................................................107 Chapter Three: Rachel Vigier and Juliana Spahr: Toward a New Poetics of Witness .................116 Constructing the Witness .................................................................................................124 Reconstructing the Witness after 9/11 ..............................................................................131 Rachel Vigier: “The Poet was There”...............................................................................139 Juliana Spahr’s Connective Politics .................................................................................147 Witness Poetry after 9/11 .................................................................................................158 Chapter Four: Lyric as Public Discourse at Poetry.com ..............................................................162 Poetry Studies and the Cultural Work of Poetries ............................................................170 Poetic Voice, Public Voice................................................................................................173 iii Apostrophe and/as Lyric ..................................................................................................183 Readers and/as Writers .....................................................................................................192 Conclusion: The Functions of Poetry...........................................................................................197 Notes ............................................................................................................................................206 Works Cited..................................................................................................................................235 iv Acknowledgements For financial support while I was writing this dissertation, thank you to the University of British Columbia, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and IODE Canada. For helping to improve my life at UBC while I was writing it, thank you to my friends, especially Simon Rolston, Sean McAlister, and Alyssa Maclean. Thank you to Marlene Briggs, Michael Zeitlin, Kevin McNeilly, and Jeff Severs for their time spent helping me be a better thinker and writer. Thank you especially to Mary Chapman, who spent the most time, and who has always so generously supported me—in this project and in everything I do. Thank you to my family for encouraging me and always making me feel capable. I am especially lucky to have, in my mom, a role model for how to be a scholar and a woman in the world. I dedicate the dissertation to Steve DiPasquale. He came in to my life as I was halfway through writing it, and I have been grateful to him, and for him, every day since. v For S. vi Introduction: Reading Poetry after 9/11 Poetry is not a healing lotion, an emotional massage, a kind of linguistic aromatherapy. —Adrienne Rich In the years since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, artists have responded to, and represented, almost every element of that traumatic day.1 Many of their representations have been controversial: for example, heated debates have centred on depictions of people jumping from the burning World Trade Center towers. When the photograph, “Falling Man,” by Associated Press photographer Richard Drew, was published in the New York Times and several other newspapers on September 12, readers complained that the photograph, which showed a man plunging to his death, was an invasion of privacy and an exploitation that turned tragedy into pornography. In 2002, a bronze sculpture, “Tumbling Woman,” by artist Eric Fischl, was erected in the Rockefeller Center concourse, but removed a week later after similar complaints; the organizer of the exhibit received repeated bomb threats from victims’ families. 2 Two New York Times-bestselling novels—Falling Man (2007) by Don DeLillo and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (2005)—also caused a stir for references to the falling bodies: DeLillo writes of a performance artist who re-enacts the fateful jumps and Foer ends his novel with a visual “flip book” that makes the bodies appear to be flying upwards, instead of tumbling down. Most reviews, and many internet forums, have had something to say about these references. One review takes offense to DeLillo’s depiction of the falling man, stating that it simply “doesn’t work” (Yardley);
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