This weblog was created and maintained for a class project in a tech writing class during the Fall 2001 semester. It's been an education in more ways than I imagined. It wasn't so much an attempt to come up with an answer (as to what the response of poetry ought to be in such circumstances) as it was an attempt to collect and offer for consideration many possibilities. In the hope that what I've gathered here might continue to prove helpful, I will leave it posted as it is today, Christmas 2001. Time now to move on to new projects. 

Thank you to Jeff, Frank, both Roberts, Claudia, Jonathon, both Jennifers, and Deborah, especially, for your enthusiasm and contributions to this site, as well as to Dennis and class mates who offered suggestions, encouragement and links. 

--Jan

Last Links

• Art Now's site, including a discussion forum.
  "ART NOW: Nationwide Artistic Responses to September 11 & Its Aftermath is an online clearinghouse of artistic responses in all media to September 11, and a discussion forum among artists on issues of art-making in times of political crisis."
• A German site: 09-11-2001.
  "The poems try to set a mark against forgetting, against the terrorism and for mutual tolerance." 
• Three more poems from Frank Matagrano's How to Breathe in Case the Plane Goes Down. (December, 2001)
• Two more essays from Robert Bohm: History and Language, Two Considerations 
  "What equivalent word-experiments, surrealisms, subject choices, etc. must be explored in order for today's US poets to develop a language worthy of describing the realities we face?" And, "Our environment is a language of images and symbols. We mock, but nonetheless are formed, by the language of the political speech - "speech" as in a multimedia thought- and mood-shaping event." (December 2001)
• And Now It's Dark: an interview with three of our poets, on poetry and language after 11 September. (October 18, 2001)
• Trauma Culture by Charles Taylor, Salon
  "From Oklahoma City to New York, we've turned violent human loss into epic narratives of suffering and patriotism. Does this help people heal or hurt them?" (December 15, 2001)
• Poetry as Prophecy  
  "Last week at a North Beach theater, Ferlinghetti read his poetry to a sold-out audience. He said art and poetry will be classified from now on as B.S. and A.S.-- Before and after September 11. He also spoke of poetry as prophecy." (October 26, 2001)
• September 11, 2001: A Journal on the Writer's Role in Society edited by Esther Altshul Helfgott  There may already be a link to this site somewhere here, but she has added material since I last checked in, including more poems by Jonathon Harrington, also featured on this site, as well as thoughts by Alicia Ostriker and others.
• The Pedestal Magazine: September 11 issue: "In this issue, we are deviating from our standard format of featuring one writer in order to present poems, stories, and essays by one hundred writers from all over the world (The United States and Canada, South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa), a collection of diverse responses and reactions to the events of September 11, 2001."
• The Mullah of Dupont Circle: It Isn't Obscene to Describe Ground Zero 
  by Timothy Noah of Slate  "Since the World Trade Center towers fell, Wieseltier, the literary editor of the New Republic, has been on a mission to excoriate any writer who dares aestheticize the moral horrors of 9/11. Like a Taliban mullah inveighing against the corrupting effects of photography and kite-flying, Wieseltier cries foul at any attempt 'to meet atrocity with sensibility.'" (Dec. 3, 2001)
• Ani DiFranco's poem in progress re: 9-11 (Dec. 2001)
• The Near Enemy of the Humanities is Professionalism by Lisa Ruddick
  "Since September 11, many scholars have discovered that the challenge of meeting their traumatized students on some shared human ground has evoked some of the most meaningful encounters of their teaching lives." (Nov. 23, 2001)