| Remembering 9/11 an evening of poetry and music Saturday September 11th, 2004 |
| Remembering 9/11 an evening of poetry and music Saturday September 11th, 2004 |
Once, a long time ago - it may have been when the Beatles hit our eastern seaboard and unhinged a lot of preconceived notions about life and love, or maybe later when John XXIII opened some windows, which blew out, unleashing Vatican II, amazing most, chagrining some - I read an interesting piece of philosophy. Essentially it stated that poets, musicians and artists were society’s visionaries, being way ahead of the pack, the prophets of their times. It’s to them we should listen if we want to know the truth, the article went on to say.
On Saturday night in our church, some 40 years later, that idea was
confirmed in my mind as I listened to a group of poets and musicians as they
honored the third anniversary of 9/11.
About 60 persons gathered under glowing stained glass windows in our small church where an oriental rug covers a large part of the floor and complements the small wooden altar set in its middle. Mary and Joseph flank the back altar. A large carved Jesus, their precocious, grown and holy child, stands suspended between heaven and earth over a back platform, the former altar area.
We enter the church to Dan Chouinard’s plaintive accordion evoking memories of hearts scalded, minds branded with those fateful numbers - 9/11.
Rich Broderick, founder of Poets Against the War, is the first to share several of his poems. Rich tells us that those who died on 9/11 “each left a hole in the fabric of time.” He says it is only right to commemorate them in verse and song which describe “grief for those who died and anger toward those who exploit that event for their own ends.”
Next, Diane Jarvenpa(right), a singer/songwriter, who records under the name
Diane Jarvi, joins Dan Chouinard in a Finnish song that she wrote, “Life In
The Trenches.” She has a forthcoming book from Dragonfly Press called
Ancient Wonders, the Modern World.
Rich reads from a poem inspired by the National Center for Lost and Exploited Children. It is called “Have You Seen Me?” He reads others: ”Thronady (Lamentation) For 9/11”, “Imperial Lexicon”, “Black Flags Over Fallujah”, and “On The Highway to Heaven”. The music helps us absorb, not the literal meaning necessarily, but opens us to the tenor of Broderick’s poems.
Kay Kysar, the author of “Dark Lake”, teaches English and Literature at Anoka Ramsey Community College. She reads her poems, “After Vietnam”, “A Tale of Home”, and “Under A Plastic Tarp”, all of which describe her feelings about 9/11 as the day unfolded on TV and her attempts to shield her children from its horror.
Thomas R. Smith’s latest collection of poems is Dark Indigo Current. He has been active in the peace movement since the 1960s. Among the poems he read were “People Falling”, “Hi!”, “The Old Country”, and “Holy Week, 2003”.
In the foreword to his book, “Peace Vigil, Poems For An Election Year (And After)”, Smith writes, “. . .the events of the last four years have demanded that we all, in whatever ways we can, bring our individual talents to bear on the task of turning our country away from the disastrous direction it has taken under Bush as would-be emperor.”
And later, “Poetry has on its side the strength of honest and imaginative language. At a time when public discourse has become a desert of lies and exhausted language, poems can still be small oases of truth.” His book is dedicated in part to the memory of Sheila and Paul Wellstone, ”one of our code words for hope.”
Robert Bly(right), big, with white, bushy hair, fills the church with his voice
and presence. He is last on the program. He tells us that “This kind of
thing needs to be done because this kind of thing needs to be done!”
Having the luxury of age, Bly speaks plainly, sometime hilariously, more often scathingly, about how he feels toward the present administration. He says we should all be “screaming” (he demonstrates) in the streets about the lies they are perpetuating on us all. He reads some of his poems, then offers free copies of his book, “The Insanity of Empire” to anyone who wants one.
At the end we leave the church imbued with resolve to try to change what we can wherever we can. We somehow know we’ve been in the good company, not only of those who died that day, but with all those across the nation who remembered and mourned the day that changed us forever. We leave, too, assured that we’ve heard the words of visionaries to whom we would do well to listen.
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