Friday, September 11, 2015

Poetic Musings: An Unofficial Story of 9-11

An Unofficial Story
for Oskar

ink-black:
smoke trails a life
from the north tower

Another sleepless night. Winter moonlight on the empty side of her bed. From the bedside table, she picks up A Place of Remembrance: The Official Photo Book of 9/11. She stares at the book for a moment. Tears roll down her face as she rips out some of the pages. With a sigh, she puts the torn-out pages in reverse order. When she flips through them, dozens of people are flying through the windows back into the building.

Editor's Choice Haibun, Cattails, May, 2015

Chen-ou Liu



The power of Chen-ou Liu’s haibun, An Unofficial Story for Oskar lies in its closing sentence: “When she flips through them, dozens of people are flying through the windows back into the building.” It is amazingly evocative image that has echoes of redemption and freedom from the tyranny of time.

The power of Chen-ou Liu’s haibun, An Unofficial Story for Oskar lies in its closing sentence ... It is amazingly evocative image that has echoes of redemption and freedom from the tyranny of time.

Visually, thematically, emotionally, and structurally speaking,  An Unofficial Story for Oskaris, a personal story behind one of the most powerful images of 9/11, is framed by the iconic image of one of  the centerpieces of  the World Trade Center -- the North Tower (One World Trade Center) -- on fire.

ink-black:
smoke trails a life
from the north tower

... When she flips through them, dozens of people are flying through the windows back into the building.

Evaluated in the context of the literature of 9/11 (such as Poetry after 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets), the Twin Towers (the North Tower, One World Trade Center, and the South Tower, Two World Trade Center) function more like an example of Japanese utamakura (poetic places, a category of poetic words involving place names that allow for greater allusions and intertextuality across Japanese poems), mainly used to conjure a memory, thought, image or association with the place referred to. For example,

twin towers
repeating their absence
day after day

Bill Kenney

two light beams shining
where there were once twin towers –
my son, my daughter

Jack Galmitz

(Note: I will further discuss how to effectively use the rhetorical device of utamakura in a forthcoming "To the Lighthouse" post)

1 comment:

  1. The opening haiku is the revision of the following one-line haiku, which was first published in Shot Glass #7, June 2012:

    ink-dark smoke of a life jumping from the north tower

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