Joy Harjo's "When the World as We Knew It Ended"
A look at the September 11th poem
As we all noted in class Harjo's line "two towers rose up from the east island of commerce and touched the sky" immediately translated to a line about the Twin Towers. The "east island of commerce" is New York City. I thought that describing the terrorist attack as a dragon was an interesting choice. Oil and fear and the plane; the buildings being "eaten whole".
Ironically, dragons are originally associated with water. Wells, rains and rivers. They are said to be wiser than humans and representative of the primal forces of nature, religion and the universe. The association of dragons being destructive and capturing princesses, reigning fire down on villages and innocent townsfolk derives from humans adaptations and stories. It is interesting that the fear, wide spread hatred and hatred of dragons comes from humans themselves. It is fear that so often drives us to reckless or dangerous acts. Fear can lead to tragedy.
"We saw it / from the kitchen window over the sink / as we made coffee, cooked rice and /potatoes,
enough for an army./ We saw it all, as we changed diapers and fed the babies." I was nine on September 11th 2001. We were listening to our 8:30 math lesson in 4th grade when my teacher answered the phone call on the class corded phone by the door. She grew very serious and after hanging up stood at the front of the classroom and told us that the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane. Anyone I've ever asked remembers where they were or what they were doing. It just had that kind of impact. The only other occasion where I've heard people recall with such clarity is the Kennedy assassination.
Overall I liked how Harjo's post ended on a slightly positive note. That life goes on. We go on.
I really enjoyed reading this post. It is very personal for me as well. I was sitting in my 3rd grade english class. We needed to go under our desks, but the teacher did not tell us why. Everything was very quiet. I remember the school day ending early and my mom picking me up. It was as if everyone was in a daze of some sort trying to figure out where to go and what to do. I think you did a great job connecting the poem to this event. I could actually picture those lines as being events that were going on when those towers fell.
ReplyDeleteI was in first grade, my teacher grew serious and quiet but slowly continued the lesson. My mom picked me up from school right away, and no one would tell me anything! I had to find out by seeing it on the TV as the news was on. At the time, it actually didn't shock me; moreso because I couldn't actually comprehend what was happening, rather than not caring. (Imagine a first grader being THAT jaded?! Haha!) Hatred stems from fear, and is used as a shield to protect (and hide) one's fear. It's incredibly puzzling how we as a human race can have so much fear of EACH OTHER that we resort to war and killing to "solve" issues. Yet, we all know how effective fighting fire with fire actually is . . .
ReplyDeleteI was young when 9/11 happened so I don't have many concrete memories of this day. I vaguely remember the day and remember being so confused as well as scared! I think for the people who were older will always remember where they were on that day, it was such an impactful day. Even though the terrorists who did this to us had the motive to hurt America, we came up on top, and this ended up bringing everyone together. It showed that we were all stronger in numbers and that we can all move along together and stronger than before.
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