My Response to 2 Poems

In this assignment I was asked to give my response to two poems of my choosing. The poems I have chosen are: Photograph from 911, by Wistawa Szymborska, and Song of Napalm, by Bruce Weigl. Out of the list of given poems, these were the two which stirred the most emotion in me, which is one of the factors in poetry I enjoy.
“They jumped from the burning floors-” (1).
When I read this first line of Szymborska’s poem, my mind immediately reverted to the day of 911 and the footage I saw of just that. This poem is a remarkable depiction of 911 in my opinion. I have not seen the actual picture the author speaks of, but I can see it in my minds eye as clearly as the day it happened. Szymborska describes how the victims of 911 who jumped from the burning towers are forever frozen in air because of the picture and how they are still physically unharmed.
There’s enough time
for hair to come loose,
for keys and coins
to fall from pockets” (7-10).
These lines describe the fact that this fall was faster than burning to death, but long enough that it would still have been torture for the victims. The descent is quick enough to avoid a slow, painful death, but long enough to be unable to escape a fearful death.
Songs of Napalm was written for the authors wife, in an attempt to help her understand what has come home with him from war. Weigl describes a innocent evening of watching the pasture with his wife after a storm. However, what seams innocent is not at all, no matter how intensely Weigl may want it to be so.
And not your good love and not the rain-swept air
and not the jungle green
Pasture unfolding before us can deny it.” (43-45)
is evident to this. This is a poem of a tortured veteran who wants to be able to have an evening of watching horses graze in the pasture as the sky’s clear from its earlier showers while in the company of his lover, only to be reminded of the worst days of his life. I think Weigl is describing how such an innocent and irrelevant scene can be so dramatically altered into one of horror and misery.
So I can keep on living,
so I can stay here beside you,
I try to imagine she runs down the road and wings
beat inside her until she rises (28-31)
is the author trying to make the best of what his mind shows him. He’s not saying he will die if he does not imagine it this way. He is doing so to maintain his sanity so that he may stay with his wife and not in a tight, white coat.
These two poems engulfed my attention so much that as I read the remaining poems, I was unable to fully concentrate on them as I was still evaluating Photograph pf 911 and Song of Napalm. When I read them a second time, my eyes welled with tears. Upon reading them aloud the tears actually fell. This is why I chose these poems, they touched something in me and made me appreciate my life and what I am fortunate enough to have.




Here is a link: http://barenakedislam.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/911-jumpers-from-hell/


Works Cited
Szymborska, Wislawa. "Photograph from 911" from Monologue of a Dog. 2005. 6 Sep. 2010

Weigl, Bruce. "Songs of Napalm" from Archaeology of the Circle: New and Selected Poems.
1999. 6 Sep. 2010