Hi readers!
What do we expect from poetry? What do we perceive the role of poetry in generating sentiments among societies? These are the questions we’ve raised in our ASTU class on the recent topic of poetry in history.
Starting from last Thursday, our ASTU class talked about four poems related to the second World War and the 911 terrorist attack. The first two poems we were introduced in class on Thursday were “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae and “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell. The first two poems surround the topic of the mourning of the British and Canadian soldiers died in the second World War, whereas they take different approaches and aspects to convey their messages. “In Flanders Fields” has generated the symbol of poppies as the common grief for the casualties in the war. On Remembrance Day, people hold up poppies as to express their remembrance of the sorrow and pain of wartime. John McCrae transmitted the message in the last stanza, where he calls upon the people to “take up our quarrel with the foe” and to “not sleep” as in to not forget the adversity in the past. On the contrary, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” focus on an individual, and the content is more explicit and less heroic than “In Flanders Fields”.
On this Tuesday, we dug into “Photograph from September 11” by Wisława Szymborska and the first poem of Juliana Spahr’s “This Connection of Everyone with Lungs”. Among the four poems, “Photograph from September 11” stroke me the most. When I saw the photo of the “Falling Man”, the realization that it is a man falling from the window of the in-flames and collapsing skyscraper immediately upset me, and I kept quiet throughout the discussion. In the photo, the human figure is suspended in the air, neither is he falling nor rising. “They’re still within the air’s reach”, Szymborska uses the word “still” to imply the stillness and aliveness of the man in the picture and other victims. Szymborska also stresses in the poem, that these falling men are no different from us. Each of us might face the situation of difficult choice like these victims one day. Although both the poem and the photo reveal no sign of violence and bloodiness, the context behind them indicate the cruelty of the terrorist attack and the courage of men to make such decision.
Living in an Asian country with little connection to the western world at the age of two, I had very little knowledge of the 911 attack and the surrounding news pertaining to this incident at that time. However, Szymborska succeeded to communicate with the masses and reinforce the concept of common precarity of Judith Butler. Same for McCrae and Jarrell, they also produce the mundaneness of the dead and draw a connection between the massive audiences and the sentiment produced via the poems.
