Late post this week, but I feel moved.
I saw this Tweet this week. It seems to apply.
Tricia is our host today at The Miss Rumphius Effect. May we remember at the ending of each day to renegotiate our relation to the world.
Late post this week, but I feel moved.
I saw this Tweet this week. It seems to apply.
Tricia is our host today at The Miss Rumphius Effect. May we remember at the ending of each day to renegotiate our relation to the world.
Heidi, wow. I had to read it twice, three times. So bitterly beautiful. Wow. Yes, "May we remember at the ending of each day to renegotiate our relation to the world." Thank you.
ReplyDeleteAfter having read your poem, Heidi, now I feel moved. Renegotiating now...
ReplyDeleteOK. I cannot move. Only my fingers can type because the images of orange flames...in skyscrapers, people leap to the ground like leaves and the early morning fires has me in a grip of memory. Heidi, this is brilliant and sad and gives voice to what we remember and continue to remember. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI am reading this after watching the morning news replay the reel that we all saw over and over 20 years ago. I am moved by how you can take a Tweet like that and use a technique to such a degree that we are amazed and stricken, like that day 20 years ago.
ReplyDeleteThis is remarkable, Heidi. You've connected so much, in a way that seems inevitable but that didn't exist before you did it. <3
ReplyDeleteThank you, friends. What's remarkable to me is how unpracticed I was as a poet at that time, and how the enormity of event brought something to my writing that wasn't available on an ordinary day.
ReplyDeleteI think your poem captures the difficulty we all feel in reconciling the horror of the events of that day with a world that also offers us so much beauty. Thanks for sharing this today.
ReplyDeleteThis is stunning, Heidi. The way you juxtapose typical fall images with those seared into our memories is powerful. Then to transition, to "renegotiate" your poem's "relation to [today's] world" is genius. I will be thinking about this poem for days to come.
ReplyDeleteWow. You put that enjambment quote to good use.
ReplyDelete"Raking commences." That line slays me.
Heidi, after spending a weekend remembering the 45 people who died on 9/11 in my village, your poem has me spiralling backwards in time. Your thoughts are clear, poetically embraced in stanza one. Then, you added the here and now. I have reread your poem and once again am amazed at how cleverly you wrote this poem with such emotion. Thank you. I think of the numbers who died on that horrible and day after hearing the incredible number who have succumbed to COVID. Life is fragile and uncertain.
ReplyDeleteYour poem leaves me thinking of all the people who perhaps used to love the beauty of September, but now face remembrance and grief in this month during which "dying" took on a new, never-to-be-altered meaning for them.
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