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September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond

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although i'm sure this anthology will be used in classrooms across the country, i love it because it puts poetry back in the hands of emotional people. from well-respected writers such as John Updike, W.S. Mervin, AI, Wendell Berry, and dozens more to writers for whom this marks their first publication, these essayists, poets, and writers of hybrid forms of letters and fiction talk about September 11th in personal terms that, because they are so candidly offered, provide insight and consolation for all of us, anyone whose tv flickered for days while the towers fell, fell, fell. some of the writers were there, some knew someone who was, but they all react as if they felt that collapse in their teeth.

September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond is a carefully put together anthology dealing with the attacks on the World Trade Center. This compilation contains pieces written by over 100 different authors and its diverse contents allow it to appeal to a variety of people.
Stylistically it is difficult to describe September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond because the genre is so widespread. The anthology includes poems, essays, short stories, fictional stories, non-fictional stories, letters, and poems-the list could continue. Each author has their own style yet the pieces have a way of fitting together and creating an amazing collection of artist's reactions to the events on September 11th. Authors like Daniela Gioseffi makes the reader laugh because she writes about an entertaining (and touching) conversation she has with a nine year old girl while authors like Fred Moramarco makes the reader cry because the contents of his poem include the final conversations of September 11th victim's lives. The different authors attempt to affect the reader in different ways creating an extremely effective anthology.
The pieces in the compilation of writings are arranged in alphabetical order by the author's last name. This unoriginal organization is actually a very effective technique used by the editor, William Heyen, because it leaves the reader in anticipation of what is left to come. Heyen could have organized the anthology by grouping similar pieces together but this option is undoubtedly inferior to his choice of arrangement. Because every author has a different point of view and style, the reader has no idea what to expect when they begin the next piece in the anthology. The reader may find two poems similar in content back to back, or an essay followed by a memoir with contents differing from one extreme to the next. The anticipation that builds within the reader regarding the content of the upcoming pieces makes September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond a book that people do not want to set down.
It is impossible to read September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond without questioning your own view on the attacks. The anthology represents an abundance of different points of view. From Muslims to Christians, Middle Eastern people to American people, presidential supporters to presidential protestors; every view is represented. One of the most amazing things about this collection of writings is the wide range of feelings it produces. There are pieces like "the window, at the moment of flame", by Alicia Ostriker, that produce feelings of anger and disbelief in many readers because it blames the Americans for the tragedy. There are also pieces like Richard Wilbur's "Letter" that produce nationalistic feelings and recreate a true sense of love and pride for America. A person's opinion of the nation and the attacks prior to reading September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond will definitely be challenged because of this book. Pieces such as "America United", by Ishmael Reed, force even the strongest supporter of the government to reevaluate the strength of our leaders and, consequently, take a second look at their own view on the matter. Initially some of the pieces included in the anthology may produce feelings of rage because the point of view of the reader and the author differ greatly. One of the things that make this anthology as effective as it is, however, is that the differing opinions (regardless of who the reader is) will be retaliated by another piece somewhere in the book. The anthology contains such a large variety of pieces that it is impossible for a person to not be able to identify and agree with at least one of the pieces.
It is inevitable that the attacks on September 11th had an affect on every American, but what is not as certain is the effects that it had on people other than Americans. September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond helps prove that the attacks were not simply an American tragedy, but rather a world tragedy. The anthology contains non-fictional stories such as "Sisters", by Karen Blomain, in which two American sisters are spending an ordinary day shopping in a flea market when the attacks occur. In this story the tragedy brings the American sisters together to mourn with Russians, Koreans, Latinos, and Indians. Many of the authors that are included in the anthology come from different cultures. The ability of this one book to cross cultures and force any reader to see the impact the tragedy had on people other than Americans is simply amazing. After reading this book it is impossible for a person to see the attacks as affecting only Americans, but instead the book forces readers to have feelings of empathy and respect for other cultures.
September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond is one of the most moving and motivational anthologies of today. Although the attacks on the World Trade Center occurred almost two years ago, it is still hard for people to cope with the tragedy. Books like this one help people (both Americans and non-Americans) deal with the truths of the attacks and come to the realization that they are not alone in whatever they are feeling. The amazing thing about September 11, 2001: American Writer's Respond is that it has the capabilities of touching every single person's life because of its diverse content. In a time period as dangerous emotional as this, people need to find a place to turn when they feel that there is nowhere left to go. Thankfully this book can be that place for anyone.

I seldomn read. In fact, this is the first book I've picked up in about a year and it is excellent. I'm just a construction worker, but this book really means a lot to me. I don't get everythingin it, but it has helped me to understand these tragedies.
Everyone who thinks about 911 with any frequency should buy this and it will heal you a bit.I'm goign to read it with my daughters so we can heal and understand as a family.

Most of us had trouble dealing with the events of sepetember 11th. The poets/writers in this compelling collection of responses to the horror of that day chisel us a foothold, a starting point from which we can begin to collectively understand ourselves in relation to our new community - shared angst as sinews. Not only is the book stuffed with peice after peice of gripping and devastating prose and poetry, it lives as one entire work. Each stands as a new brick in our hopeful and sometimes pessimistic reconstruction. William Heyen is our Master Mason. His selection of contibutors and subsequent arrangment of their words allows us to tread for a while with them and then with our own bombarded constitutions.
Heyen has brought together the big names, the poetic underground, and the gristly spine of the writing community. This book should be on all of our shelves as a peice of living national histroy, and in the reeling hands of all school children.

This collection needs to be on our shelves for a long, long time, as we come to understand and articulate what occurred in New York and Washington, DC, on September 11, 2001. The book is more powerful than many other books on the subject because it's a collection of many voices and because these are the voices of people who devote their lives to writing, to finding language that captures a moment or grapples with an idea.

Moreover, this book isn't just the usual, big-name authors, though they are represented well by Wendell Berry, Lucille Clifton, Diane Glancy, Maxine Hong Kingston, Ishmael Reed, John Updike, and others. Some of the best--the most delicate, the most demanding--writing in this anthology is by relative unknowns. Nancy Kuhl's piece obsesses on the numbers, on their truthfulness and their discrepency. Richard Deming writes of the inadequacy of normalcy, the role of television, and the theory of language. Al Hellus, like a friend of my own, states "It was my birthday." Bruce Mills explores the ways in which we understand space and perspective as we look to the horizon. Almost every writerly voice matters here.

Indeed, this text would be a good one for high school and college students. Really, though, it's for all of us. This collection by American writers at a particular moment will serve as an intellectual, emotional, and artistic resource for years to come.

The events that occurred on September 11, 2001, changed the history of the United States forever. No longer are Americans fearless of other world powers, no matter how large or small, but now Americans are to some degree living in fear. Terrorist attacks can happen again today, tomorrow, a month from now or a year from now. There is no way to plan for the unexpected, even though cautionary levels are through the roof. The outcome of that fateful day changed American attitudes. The hatred felt toward the U.S. was overwhelming. I believe that if it would have been possible, there would not be a single American man, woman or child alive to tell the frightening tale. The history of the U.S. changed that day, and luckily, there is people left to tell about it and share stories and emotions.
Following Spetember 11, 2001, there has been numerous literary works that have popped up about the issue. One of these works is by William Heyen and is called September 11, 2001 American Writers Respond. This literary work is an anthology of 127 American writers that responded to the tragedy. The anthology is a collection of fiction writings, essays, and poetry and prose. What is amazing to me is that these writers were able to respond at all. Following the events, there was numbness throughout the U.S. Mass confusion and hysteria was going on. No one knew for sure who was involved, who was killed, or what the meaning behind the event was. It was as if, for Americans, the world had stopped moving for days at a time while they watched over and over again the planes crashing and the towers falling.
For months afterwards, news headlines and magazine covers were filled with pictures and stories of people's experiences and thoughts. This is what September 11, 2001 American Writers Respond is all about-experiences and thoughts. The stories and prose included in the anthology are by various writers throughout the U.S. and vary in length, depth, and character. This may be the only downfall of the anthology. If there was some uniformity to the pieces, I believe, the anthology would be much stronger. Nonetheless, the fact that the writers were able to capture their thoughts and emotions during this chaotic and emotionally charged time is all that matters, because these thoughts and emotions are exactly what everyone in the U.S. wanted, and in some ways needed.
Americans couldn't get enough of others thoughts and were also eager to share their own. Most of the pieces in the anthology explore the meaning behind the events, such as what does this say about humanity, what does this say about everyone's sense of well-being and why is the U.S. so hated. Some explore what should be done as a counterattack, and other simplier pieces, recollect what a particular writer was doing at the time of the incident. The reaction of the people to this tragedy is similar to when Kennedy was shot or when the U.S. first landed on the moon. Everyone talks about what they were doing. Curiosity is great but it is more than simple curiosity. A uniting of the nation came to pass, and the people want to feel as though they belong, as though they all shared a common experience and grew as a result of that experience. This also is what the anthology does for the reader.
One piece that particularly grabbed my attention was by Antler, and was taken from Skyscraper Apocalypse. The lines that made me grasp the events in a different light go as follows:

Have the winds blown enough
that by now all of us have breathed
particles of the burned-up corpese?
Sooner of later all of us will inhale
invisible remains of the incinerated victims...

I had never thought of the events in this light. Living in Wisconsin, and not knowing any victims, made me disengage myself from the tragedy in some ways. My life wasn't changed in a drastic manner so I didn't think about it constantly. However, when I read these lines, and I think that at this very moment I could be breathing someone's remains, makes me look and remember the tragedy in an altered way. This is also a major part of the anthology, looking at others perspectives and making them part of the larger picture. The people that lost their lives were live human beings, and even if I didn't know them, their death does make a difference in my life.
Overall the anthology was well put together. The writers all had something intellectual to contribute and did so in a meaningful manner. It is a mixture of works that makes the reader feel the tragedy all over again yet, at the end there is hope, even though nothing has been resolved at the time the anthology was published. The anthology's greater purpose, I believe, is to console and also to share thoughts and emotions, which at a time like this, as any psychologist would say, is very crucial.

September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond is a collection of voices of well-known authors along with lesser-known authors who are just as effective. The authors, including award-winning poets, teachers, professors, war veterans, and Pulitzer Prize winners, try to express themselves to help readers deal with the events of September 11th. It is an assortment of powerful poetry and prose mixed with gripping letters and short essays.
The book, arranged in alphabetical order by author, is a candid set of thoughts and feelings that the authors experienced during the days following September 11th. The various backgrounds of the one hundred plus authors are evident by their written thoughts and expressions about the September 11th tragedy.
The best pieces in the book are the one's where the authors decided to express themselves through poetry. There are two poems that stand out to me. The first poem is "Monday Sundown" and is part of a collection by Lucille Clifton titled "9/11/01 - 9/17/01.
"i bear witness no thing
is more human than hate

i bear witness no thing
is more human than love"
It deals with the two major emotions felt during the tragedy-love and hate. Those emotions are exactly what every American was dealing with after September 11th. We hated the people responsible for the attacks, but loved everyone who passed away or was lending a helping hand. The second poem in the collection that moves me is Lucien Stryk's "Quiet, Please!" It contained a verse that September 11th survivors could understand and quite possibly, help put their thoughts into words.
"down the stairs. Survival
heaps dead flowers into sleep.
Keep still. I think I'm dreaming."
The piece in the book that is both my favorite and most personal is coincidentally is not a poem. It is Karl Elder's short essay titled "The Silence." I must make a note that Karl Elder is a professor of mine at Lakeland College, but I have no bias as Elder's piece deals with the exact same experience I had. He writes about a Green Bay Packer's football game played at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin just 13 days after September 11th. He describes how his Iranian friend, now a United States citizen and also a professor at Lakeland, is treated as he enters the famed stadium. He illustrated his feelings as the game wore on. The funny thing about the piece is that I enjoyed it without having to completely read it. I attempted to read it five times before I could make it through without daydreaming of that night. Elder's piece took me back to that game on September 24th.
The piece transported me to when I was standing in the long lines before the game and how I actually asked God to protect us that night. I thought of how I took my Green Bay Packer hat off during the Star Spangled Banner because I wanted to show respect for the nation and not just because it was routine. It recaptured the eerie feeling I had about halfway through the second quarter when I realized that an important football game was nothing more than a distraction for the events in New York. It brought the chill back to my neck as I remembered when Chris Gizzi, a reserve linebacker for the Packers and an Air Force reservist, led the green and gold from the locker room under a banner of red, white, and blue. It reminded me of the time when the crowd chanted "USA, USA!" and I finally realized what patriotism felt like. And lastly, "The Silence" took me back to the drive home when my brother-in-law (a volunteer firefighter) and I had an hour-long talk and not once brought up the Packers.
The book is being used in my class at Lakeland College, but it is unlike any textbook I have ever read. September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond is not facts and figures, but a book that brings back many of the same feelings that were felt on September 11th-fear, sadness, confusion, and disillusionment. The stories of September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond, told through the words of the book's brilliant contributors, are not meant to inform or entertain, but as Elder's "The Silence" took me back, the pieces evoke one's own remembrance of September 11th. Through the works in this book, I began to understand the feelings I felt after September 11th.
Every reader that reads this book will be transported back to September 11th. Whether the reader was watching the events unfold on television or from a New York rooftop, September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond will cause the reader to remember how they felt. That is why Americans should buy the book and the personal remembrance of September 11th is the only reason necessary to buy it. After reading September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond readers will place it on a shelf or a coffee table, but they should never leave the stories far from their conscience.

This compilation, by a huge array of authors, unites each and every one of us in grief. Although each piece is written by a different person-different in gender, race, nationality, age, etc-it shows the true emotions that lie within each author. It bonds us all together. The authors of this book deserve respect and admiration for openly putting themselves out there for all of us to witness their feelings, fears, and hopes. And although a reader may not walk away from this book with a smile, it is a way to feel connected to others. It is a way to cope with the tragedy, and a way to ensure that we will never forget.

September 11, 2001 American Writers Respond is a compilation of musings written within days of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, making this book a gem for its timeliness. The contributors express in poetry, essay, letter and other forms of composition the thoughts and feelings they had regarding the horror of that day of infamy. With over 120 writers included, the impressions encompass a spectrum of opinions and feelings. It is safe to say there is something for everyone in this book. The entries range from serious realism to fantastic prose, all relating to September 11, 2001. The writing is flawless and stimulating, both for its originality and for the variety of emotion the pieces create.
Now that almost two years have passed since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, it is interesting to read the book and remember the misconceptions and rumors that were reported on the news or written in magazines and newspapers right after the attacks. No one knew at that time what the long-term effects would be on the nation. Writers predicted events that have not happened. Reading their forecasts now is amusing and sometimes sad. It recalls our naivety before the loss of innocence.
Above all, this book is a montage of American thought. Readers will find a voice that echoes their own. One will take note of new friends, but carefully walk around those who reflect an opinion too far from their own. It is a timely book, but a monster in the closet. One must choose wisely when to take it out, for it will make even the most callous reader remember, reflect, and react to that awful September 11th.

We all know where we were on September 11th, 2001. Some of us were headed to work, others to school, some were with families and some were alone. We all know the thoughts that struck our minds as those airplanes struck those towers. Many of us would like to express the pain and emotion that we felt but are unable to find the words. That is why this book comes in handy.

At about 435 pages, September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond is an anthology featuring 120 writers. Loaded with first hand impressions penned only months within the attack on America, the book is a balanced mix of political response, personal reflection and artistic vision of the day that changed the world forever.

The anthology is Editor, William Heyen's effort to reflect the opinions and experiences of the world's people. It is a balanced representation of ideas, but hardly covers a fraction of the opinions and questions of all affected by the attack. And although it will never answer "why?" What it will do is let us express, empathize and identify with one another, not only as writers, not only as Americans, but as human beings.