Poems of 9/11: Falling Man, and the Cultural Work of Poetry

Here are the poems which we will discuss today:

Wislawa Szymborska, “Photograph from September 11” (online)
Martin Espada, “Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100” (online)
Adam Zagajewski, “Try to Praise the Mutilated World” (online)
Galway Kinnell, “When the Towers Fell” (online)
Links here: http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/911poetry/
From September 11, 2011: American Writers Respond
Preface by William Heyen
Naomi Shihab Nye, “To Any Would-Be Terrorists (287)
Dianne Seuss, “Falling Man” (350)
Maxine Hong Kingston, “Memorial Service” (222)
Fred Moramarco, “Messages from the Sky” (279)




Two of the poems deal with the so-called "Falling Man," as will Jonathan Safran Foer's novel; why do you think that this image has become such a central image of 9/11, and how do the poems make a symbol of this jumper?

1. When reading these pieces, ask if they are poems of grief or grievance, or do they perform some other cultural work?
2. How do these poems represent and reflect on the events of 9/11, in ways that the official narrative of the Commission Report does not? Why?
3. If you were to choose one to be the most important poem of 9/11, which would it be, and why?

The Super Bowl and Militarism: Some Nachos for Thought

Anyone who watches the NFL for more than an hour realizes that football is presented as the national sport, and that the language of war is often employed (grotesquely so) to describe what happens on the field. I'm a fan of sports and athletic prowess as much as any American male, but the Super Bowl raises the usual level of masculinity to an extreme and laughably ridiculous degree--then adds HGH, a big swig of American self-regard and patriotism, objectification of women, and worship of military might.

9/11 has frequently been part of the commemorative aspect of the Super Bowl. Last year, U2 did this:

Budweiser ran this commercial:

Now, before you get all weepy about it, remember, they are selling beer. With the death of 3,000 people.
When the Patriots won the Super Bowl, owner Robert Kraft said, "we are all Patriots."

Nicholas Archer recently wrote his whole dissertation on the topic of NFL films and the "counter subversive" politics they trumpet and circumscribe. Archer writes:

In his work on the use of the male body in Monday Night Football broadcasts during the 1994 season, Trujillo notes that the discourse used to describe the players and their actions on the field often referred to the players as weapons and their actions as military maneuvers.

During the season, players were described as "weapons," "missiles," "shields," ''rockets," "hitting machines," and other instruments of violence. And these "weapons" engaged in an impressive array of offensive and defensive maneuvers. For example, among the terms used by MNF commentators to describe what these offensive and defensive weapons (bodies) did on the football field were attack, blow away, break through, burst, catapult, club, crash, cripple, crunch, decapitate, decimate, destroy, dislodge, dislocate, dismantle, drill, explode, fire, fly, hammer, hit, hurdle, jackhammer, kill, launch, mortar, mug, penetrate, plug, pop, pound, push, ram, rifle, rip, shoot, shred, slam, slash, smash, smoke, snap, shred, spin, stearnroll, tattoo, tomahawk, toss, twist, unload, upend, whack, whip, wound, and wreck.

...Moreover, their analysis reinforces the frame of warfare or pageant of violence that Powers argues made the League the success it is, noting that the “Monday Night Football” broadcasts were introduced with exploding graphics and a theme song that included lyrics “Like a rocket burning through time and space, The NFL’s best star will rock this place...the battle lines are drawn.”

While such findings are important in showing the specific ways NFL broadcasts use militaristic imagery, they do little to tell us what precise political utility these symbols have relative to the larger puzzle of countersubversive elements in the American political tradition. While Trujillo does argue in part that the valuation of militarism the NFL promotes may relate to changes of gender relations and female boundary invasion into male occupations in the 1990s63, such analyses seem insufficient, especially in light of aforementioned demographic findings that females constitute 50 percent of the NFL broadcast audience. What then, does the purpose of pushing militaristic symbolism in NFL broadcasts serve?

The use of militaristic condensation symbols in NFL videography serves the countersubversive agenda by normalizing militarism as a constitutive part of the American experience. In doing so, it prepares the audience for mobilization in times of actual military conflict to more readily accept the binary divisions and fears of alien invasion created by the countersubversive and the appropriateness of military action against them. It may also, in times of actual alien penetration, serve to recharge the legitimacy of the National Security State when its capacity to protect people is brought into question. In essence, the NFL’s use of militaristic symbols helps to personalize military conflicts by allowing viewers to experience the nationalistic fervor of real warfare vicariously by linking it to the viewing of the fictional warfare of pro football.

What if the best way to be patriotic this Sunday is to turn off the television?

Charlie Wilson's War. Islam the new communism?

Charlie Wilson's War is not a date movie. I've always been a great fan of Tom Hanks, Forrest Gump being a gauge for what I consider a good movie or not. However, he did not wow me in his role as Charlie Wilson. But none the less, this is not a movie review. As a story based on historical fact, it did. Charlie Wilson's War made me question American foreign policy. It made me question whether or not we provoked the events that took place on 9/11, which is a difficult concept to process. Was 9/11 inevitable? I was born at the tail end of the cold war, during the first Bush Administration, so communism has not had the verbal power it did back in 1991. Communism or the Soviet Union is little more to me than a punchline on  Family Guy. The threat is archaic. I see no threat in China, even though they embody the ideas of Soviet Russia. I see no threat from Cuba. I don't know what it's like to hide under my desk during a fallout drill. I've play Black Ops though and found the concept mildly amusing. However, communism is not a laughing matter when it comes to talking to my parents. I mentioned communism the other day when filling out a voter's registration and my mother warned me, "You better stop, they blacklist people and I'm not going down because of you." Islamism provokes fear in me and is a real . Is this all a product of Charlie Wilson? What's next?

New York, New York- B.O.B.

I can honestly say that I am a fan of all music. Not saying that I don't like the other videos/songs about 9/11, i just prefer something more upbeat and fast paced. I would rather prefer something modern to say the least. In this case I like this song by B.O.B. he talks about 9/11 attacks from many points during that day I feel like. He talks about the troubles that were present on that day, for instance he states at one point when he is on a CB radio saying breaker breaker 9 breaker breaker 1 9, he is asking for help at this point to get an operator on the phone line because he wants to report the attacks. Then he states that this isn't a riot its way more then that. He means that these people aren't running to cause trouble like a riot but, they are running because they are afraid for their life. they are currently running to save their own life and try to get to safety. Then when he finally gets on the phone call since so many people are calling them responding to the attacks, many are put on hold. When he finally got through they had him do some things to narrow down people's calls which is typical nowadays with issues "please press this number if you need help with...". This is very annoying to many people especially to people who were trying to call and get through to the police right away just to tell them what is going on. One of my favorite lines in this song are BoB's last lines "Let them know we run this shit, And let them know just how you feel the way your country is". He doesn't get specific by saying "them" over and over again. He tells us to show our feelings as a whole, not as an individual but how the overall mood/feeling is of the country at this particular time of our life.

Analysis of The Lyrics
This is a website that many people can show their views of the lyrics line by line. I use this website to analyze many songs.

Interview with John Walker Lindh's parents

A Father's Plea for his Son's Release

Below is an op-ed piece published by John Walker Lindh's father last May in the NYTimes.

May 21, 2011 Bin Laden’s Gone. Can My Son Come Home?
By FRANK R. LINDH San Francisco

ON the evening of May 1, we learned that Osama bin Laden had been killed. The following dawn, I left my house in the Bay Area to catch a bus to Oakland International Airport. I flew to Indianapolis for a scheduled visit with my son, John Walker Lindh, at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind.

I love my son. I enjoy our periodic visits and our weekly telephone calls, but this visit felt different. “If Bin Laden is dead,” I kept thinking, “why can’t John come home?”

A convert to Islam, John was found, unarmed and wounded, in a warlord’s fortress in northern Afghanistan in December 2001. He was subjected to physical and psychological abuse — a precursor to the mistreatment of many prisoners, in both Afghanistan and Iraq, by the American military during the George W. Bush era. Marines took a photograph of John, blindfolded, bound and naked. It was published and broadcast worldwide.

In post-9/11 America, John became a symbol of “the other.” He was called the American Taliban. A traitor. Detainee No. 1 in the war on terrorism.

President George W. Bush called John a “Qaeda fighter.” Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said, inaccurately, that he had been captured “with an AK-47.” Attorney General John Ashcroft said John had “turned his back on our country and our values.” Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani suggested that John be put to death for treason; polls showed that many Americans agreed.

This was heartbreaking to me and John’s mother. The son we know is intelligent, spiritual and good-natured. He has a wry sense of humor. He is fluent in Arabic, and curious about the history of the world’s languages and cultures. John was not running away from anything when he first went overseas. He had a passionate desire to embrace all aspects of Islam, including the Arabic language. He embarked on an unusual odyssey of learning and adventure with full support from his parents. He selected Yemen, where he traveled in 1998, at age 17, because it was one of the best places to learn classical Arabic. In November 2000, John left Yemen for Pakistan, and the next April, he wrote to me and his mother to say he was going into the mountains of Pakistan for the summer. That was the last we heard from him.

Throughout the summer, and especially after 9/11, our family became increasingly worried about John’s whereabouts and his welfare. In December 2001 we were shocked to learn from the news that John had been found among a group of Taliban prisoners who had survived an uprising and massacre at an old fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif.

Like Ernest Hemingway during the Spanish Civil War, John had volunteered for the army of a foreign government battling an insurgency. He thought he could help protect Afghan civilians against brutal attacks by the Northern Alliance warlords seeking to overthrow the Taliban government.

His decision was rash and blindly idealistic, but not sinister or traitorous. He was 20 years old.

Before 9/11, the Bush administration was not hostile to the Taliban; barely four months before the attacks it gave $43 million in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. There was nothing treasonous in John’s volunteering for the Afghan Army in the spring of 2001. He had no involvement with terrorism.

I was stunned when I learned that John had gone to Afghanistan. It wasn’t our fight; he put himself in harm’s way without his parents’ approval. He did not go into Afghanistan alone; he took his family with him, and we all have suffered for his impulsive choice.

But John’s case was never about evidence. It was based purely on emotion — shock and anger over 9/11, compounded with a deep frustration that Bin Laden was able to escape from American forces. During the prison raid in which John was captured, another young American, a C.I.A. officer named Johnny Micheal Spann, was fatally shot. Mr. Spann’s father has pushed for harsh punishment. I respect his grief, and his son’s heroism. But his belief that John somehow was responsible for, or could have prevented, the death of his son is mistaken. In fact, in a plea deal in October 2002, the government dropped its most serious accusations against John, including terrorism and conspiracy to kill Americans.

John acknowledged only that he had aided the Taliban and carried weapons. For this, he accepted a term of 20 years’ imprisonment. He turned 30 in February. On May 2 and 3, I had two long visits with John. He remains idealistic and spiritual, and a practicing Muslim. He once told me he thought Bin Laden had done more harm to Islam than anyone in history.

As I said farewell, we both felt a sense of closure. I saw grief in his eyes over the pain he has caused himself and his family. John was a scapegoat, wrongly accused of terrorism at a moment when our grieving country needed someone to blame because the real terrorist had gotten away.

Now that Bin Laden is dead, I hope President Obama, and the American people, can find it in their hearts to release John, and let him come home. Ten years is enough.

Frank R. Lindh is a lawyer.

Toby Keith Vs. Steve Earle: Us Vs. Them?

Steve Earle’s “John Walker Blues” is a sharp contrast to songs such as Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue”, a fact apparent within moments of beginning each song. But the differences between the two really cut to the heart of the American sentiment following the attacks on 9/11, and hearkens back to topics discussed in a number of our class sessions. “Courtesy” is an upbeat, optimistic, patriotic song about American resurgence that many people hoped would come after the attacks, a fact that made it a very popular song. “John Walker Blues”, on the other hand, is more of a folk song about an American-born, intelligent young man who graduated high school ahead of his peers, and went to Yemen to study Arabic instead of immediately enrolling in college. Upon returning home, he found out his parents had split up and decided to go back to Yemen. He wasn’t seen again until he was arrested as an American “enemy” and “traitor”. As Steve Earle said in the interview before he played the song on TV, John Walker Lindh was never proven guilty of a crime such as treason, yet he continues to serve a prison sentence fit for a crime of that magnitude. When Steve Earle first came out with that song, he was met with harsh criticism. Many people were up in arms. It was misconstrued as a song sympathetic al Qaeda at best, and at worst Steve Earle was considered “on the side” of John Walker Lindh (by former President George H.W. Bush. That shows just how volatile Manichean thinking can be. When a country becomes so entrenched in the “us vs. them” mentality, folk singers become enemies and men go to jail for unproven crimes, and others still are picked up off the streets of countries around the world, handcuffed and blindfolded in secret CIA planes and flown to places like Egypt to be tortured for information. That practice is called extraordinary rendition, and continues today. The (mostly) men taken to places like Egypt do not have to be proven guilty, and oftentimes no evidence is found against them. But it gets worse. Legislation recently has been passed through Congress that would allow people in the U.S. to be subject to similar detention, by military personnel and TSA agents without evidence and for an indefinite amount of time. Steve Earle’s song first highlighted the problem of the “with us or against us” mentality, but it continues today.