Old poems worth rereading in these days • Sandburg, Yeats, Ginsberg, Blake, Sitwell & Auden

Join the Discussions • The Debt of Our Art: Poets’ Duty “...thinking about the purpose of poetry in time of war and crisis... who is your audience?”    --Poetry Guide   • Two Lines for Peace “Here is an idea: Write a two-line poem that will foster peace in the world.”   --Pixordia

Elsewhere at About • Links for more info from About U.S. Government Info

Elsewhere on the Web • Poet Laureate Billy Collins’ commemorative poem “The Names” in The New York Times • Former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s poem “9/11” in The Washington Post • “Poetry and Sept. 11: A Guided Anthology” by Robert Pinsky in Slate • “The Twin Word Towers” created from a collaborative crisis poem at the People’s Poetry Gathering site • “The Language of War and Peace,” special issue of Big Bridge • “Words To Comfort,” a selection of poems and photographs from the NYC benefit readings October 17 in Jacket 15 • “American Terror, writings in the immediate aftermath,” special issue of Masthead • “Poems for the Time,” anthology collected by Alicia Ostriker in Moby Lives • “Poetry and Tragedy,” reactions & poems from the recent Laureates in USA Today • Four poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson, Marianne Moore, Carlos Drummond de Andrade & Czeslaw Milosz, collected by Robert Pinsky in Slate • “Auden on Bin Laden” by Eric McHenry in Slate

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s claim that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world” may seem a romantic notion, and poets like any other people may easily feel themselves overtaken by worldly events in times of war & crisis. But if you believe in the value of poem-making & the power of word-art, as we do, you will heed the imperative expressed by my co-Guide Bob Holman in his letter of September 12: “Don’t withdraw. Use words.”

Poets around the world have been doing just that: witness the many special collections linked in the box on the right under “Elsewhere on the Web,” the large number of poems gathered by the San Francisco Chronicle from its readers under the heading of “Turning to Poetry” and similar collections in newspapers & magazines across the US and around the world.... We are proud to offer our own enlarged anthology of “Poems After the Attack” here. (You may wish to bookmark this table of contents page, as the anthology keeps on growing.)

Our collection comes to you accompanied by the same wish it carried in September: In your grief, anger, consternation, confusion or resolve, we hope these poems offer you comfort, clarity or grace....

Margery Snyder

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• “Cement Cloud” by Bob Holman
• “Palestine” by Lorna Dee Cervantes
  
  
• “Firefighter’s Prayer” by David Cochrane
• “A Little Ramshackle Shack” by Daniel Moore (Abd al-Hayy)
• “Ghost Dance” by Jim Cohn
• “Will It Be Heard” and “5000 Souls Leaving” by Larry Jaffe
• “Poem for Sophie, Daisy, Bob & Elizabeth” by Roland Legiardi-Laura
• “I Saw You Empire State Building” by Edwin Torres
• “WTC 9/11” by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
• “On the Ninety-Ninth Floor” by Shann Palmer
• “When the Skyline Crumbles” by Eliot Katz
• “September 12” and “Image” by John Kissingford
• “Wage Peace” by Judyth Hill
  
  
• “The Yodeller” and “Trade Center” by Anne MacNaughton
• “Collapse” by Wynne Mercado
• “Knock Three Times” by Bob Rosenthal
• “Before and After” by Julie Craig
• “If Only” by Adam
• “Lines After Bidart While Watching Television” by John Mulrooney
• “Revenge (911 Series)” by Duane Tucker
• “An American Soldier” by Mary Hamrick
• “No Time For Dreamers” by Paul E. Nelson
• “down” by Jesse Glass
• “Report from the Front” by Robert Sward
• “The Smell of Trouble” by Alexandra Oliver
  
  
• “Remembrance” and “A New York Winter” by Marj Hahne
• “September Eleventh” by Penny Cagan
• “When the Epic Returns” by Denis Dunn
• “The W After” by Joe Aimone
• “The Beautiful World in Ruins” by Steve Potter
• “Ground Zero” by Hudson Owen
• “Groundswell of the Broken” by Victoria Vasquez
• “In the Wake of America” by Tony Beyer
• “In Central Park” by Karen Karpowich
• “Anecdote of Antiquity” and “The Coelacanth (Osama bin Laden)” by Jeffrey Alfier
• “This Is What I Know” and “Dry Season” by Christina Querrer
• “Falling Through Air” by Margery Snyder
  
  
• From the poets in our Forum
• More from the poets in our Forum

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