KNOW THYSELF: Thoughts on the Poetry of 9-11

Nearly 3,000 died in the towers. I lost no one

Unwarranted causes. Unnecessary conflict. Unwanted violence.

Perhaps, when Stephen Crane wrote 'War is Kind', his time was one whose standards of selflessness - glory, honor, sacrifice - greatly differed from our own standards (if indeed we have any). We daily struggle among myths of multiculturalism, individuality, nationalism, racism, gender and other group-entitling definitions of 'who I am'. Yet, I may not join in struggle, may personally be without a cause, may see no truth in it for me. However, a cause is defined by the group; no individual standard may warrant action. 'Standard' - even TRUTH - has become imprecise language carrying little or no meaning beyond 'what I now believe' or 'present group ideology' (ours is a time in which no one may actually think for him- or herself). But, in all our talk of group identity, we live in an age of self expression and each life reflects the cause of self-determination determining for ourselves which causes are acceptable and assigning excess to an indefinable other group, a THEM - Big Brother, big business, bigoted beliefs. Each of us, then, battles a personal 'boogey-man'. Meanwhile, a group entitles or disallows action - to animals, to soldiers in battle, women in pregnancy, artists, musicians, to language itself, and so on; but, never to 'me' - a cause is always about US versus THEM

Our poets are permitted to write about and readers are drawn to moments of selflessness in the name of a cause. Apparently, we seek knowledge of who or what lay beyond the shields of ego with which we privately encounter public worlds.

The notion of a privacy held sacred over public need or desire , equal to that sacredness of self-determinism versus group affiliation, remains extremely problematic and prone to generate violence. When Robert Graves penned his dictum 'tranquility is of no poetic use', perhaps he intended those peculiar psychological distortions of his age - alienation and estrangement . We have found no greater cause than these: As we are alone in our psyches, we build fences around a perceived herd of identity to whose members we grant scarce affiliation; As 'I' am captive to public groups superficially defined - by genitals, pigments, costumes or customs - I build walls against a perceived horde of identity into whose body I am assigned arbitrarily by others or foolishly by myself. In fighting against one, we fight against the other. Thus, conflict defines each of us. Our poets write of it: the confessional poems, the diary entries, the journals of our lives are swollen with violence committed against us and against ourselves. Ironically, against these most private human passages which they read, readers have come to believe in the inseparability of the object created and its creating observers, and have come to see observer as object - author, poet, poem, character, persona are but aspects of one THING. Against the perceived thing-ness of even our most private cries, conflict has become, unlike tranquility, necessary.

In its most extreme form our internalized conflict rises to externalized violence. Our public and private world, like the universe, appear to expand or contract in a great zero-sum game: rights denied or granted must impinge on 'me'; and 'me' as group means certain limits may or may not be crossed.

Owens, Sassoon, Byron, Petofi, among many other great soldier-poets have written of war - war always a grandly mysterious place and time. Violence enthralls. Poets have written of crossing public lines and crushing private limits. We read them to learn 'who I am.' One craves secretly not only to read of it but to wear so publicly on a broad chest or on a sleeve the rewards of combat. Our poets of war and violence are poets who must write about 'me'; they are those poets for whom Ours/Mine is an age of war and rumors of war. In their poems we find ourselves and our times, a time in which Vendetta is to gangster as terrorism is to war, and the drive-by-shooting is to 9-11's twin towers what carpet bombing is to tactical maneuver. I pine for a lost beloved; we march in the streets to, for, or against violence.

Violence unwanted. It is a need, an ultimate inalienable 'right' deep inside the chasm of identity walled by Me/Mine : We/Ours. Poets write about it; we must read of it. In its most extreme form.

I too have lost all those we have lost.

what about you?

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