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For All the World's Ground Zeroes, Poetry

When the towers fell, St. Paul's Chapel was a nearby refuge. Ten years later, I paid my tribute there with other Canadian poets.

Fiona Tinwei Lam 10 Sep 2011TheTyee.ca

Fiona Tinwei Lam is the author of two books of poetry, and the editor of The Bright Well: Contemporary Canadian Poems about Facing Cancer (Leaf Press, 2011).

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Vancouver poet Fiona Lam reads at St. Paul's Chapel, which served as a rescue centre after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

This past spring, a group of Canadian poets gathered for a book launch and poetry reading at St. Paul's Chapel in New York, a historic church that served as a place of refuge and recovery for rescue workers over an eight month period after the Sept.11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center towers close by.

Built in 1766, the chapel had withstood both the Great New York City Fire of 1776 and, much later, the flames and flying debris from the disintegrating twin towers. Our host, American poet, Chester Johnson, told us about the background of the chapel and how it had been converted for use during the disaster. Thousands of volunteers from all backgrounds, including our host, had worked 12-hour shifts round-the-clock, using their skills and abilities to offer whatever support and assistance that the 2,000 fire fighters, construction workers, police and other emergency workers required each day, from making beds, providing medical treatment, cooking and serving meals, offering counselling, to performing music.

Chester Johnson described what the chapel had been like during its time as a rescue centre. Passers-by had adorned the wrought-iron fence surrounding the chapel with banners, stuffed animals, photographs, turning it into a makeshift memorial. Indoors, the chapel's walls had been covered with letters, drawings and banners sent by well-wishers of all ages. In the pew once occupied by George Washington centuries before, podiatrists had treated workers whose boots were burnt off their feet.

Afterward, we walked around the chapel, examining the many displays and shrines for lost friends and family members and for rescue workers. As I looked out from the rear doors to the gaping 65 hectare space where the towers had once stood, I remembered the W. H. Auden poem that had been read on NPR and reprinted in several U.S. newspapers soon after the 9-11 attacks. The lines in the poem about the perpetual historical cycles of harm and retribution led me to ponder of the repercussions of "the war on terror," from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo. But other lines reminded me of the poem's affirmation of life and hope. According to the New York Times, Auden's poem took on "a quasi-scriptural status" as many people there turned to poetry. An article in Slate magazine discussed how the clichés, slogans, and abstractions uttered at the time had left people "craving language that's as precise as their pain."

Witnesses and chroniclers

The British poet had written "September 1, 1939" at the commencement of World War II when Germany had invaded Poland. Despite the poem's success, Auden grew to dislike it, excluding it from an edition of his collected works and often refusing permission to reprint it. However, because of some of its startling parallels to 9-11 events, for example its references to the "unmentionable odour of death" in September, "blind skyscrapers," and "Imperialism's face," the poem seemed prescient, while at the same time taking a stand against "negation and despair." Interestingly, Auden had found one well-known and often quoted line from the poem, "we must love each other or die," especially problematic. In one published version, he deleted the entire stanza that contained it, and in another he changed the single key word "or" to "and," giving the line a very different meaning. What humans need to peacefully coexist might have been too complex to prescribe.

Auden's dissatisfaction with his poem mirrors the struggle that many poets feel when they attempt to write about the human condition or the tenor of their times. It may feel impossible to capture the scope, scale and impact of historical events or crises adequately, yet there is that fierce drive to try. Eventually, there might be one or two compelling poems that stand out from the myriad others that will come to represent a collective experience.

In Canadian poet A. F. Moritz's award-winning book, The Sentinel, the poet serves as a kind of watchman or scout for society. Poets can also serve as witnesses and chroniclers. Poet and editor Carolyn Forché gathered poetry from 140 different poets spanning over five continents, covering the Armenian genocide to Tiananmen Square, in the landmark anthology, Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness. Manitoba-raised, New York-based poet Rachel Vigier was present during the 9-11 attacks and published a number of poems on the subject, including "Names," a poem about the need to acknowledge the specific lives lost, to save them from being effaced by death and rendered anonymous.

Confronting annihilation

The term "Ground Zero" was originally used to designate the point on the ground beneath the detonation of a nuclear bomb, and began with the Manhattan project and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It came to refer more generally to the epicentre of destruction and damage in a disaster, and was used frequently in reference to the site of the 9-11 attacks.

While at St. Paul's and long after, I thought about the "ground zeros" all over the world, and how important it is for us to confront and struggle against annihilation and the forces that dehumanize us, irrespective of ideology, ethnicity, nationality or religion. I reflected upon the need to find an antidote to silence and speechlessness when grief or horror strike us. And as I listened to each of my fellow poets reading their finely crafted poems on a range of themes that afternoon just before the start of spring, it seemed fitting that we had been invited there as part of a community's efforts to celebrate creativity and the beauty of language across borders.

[Did you like this story? See more like it in Rights and Justice.]  [Tyee]

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