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Sarah Robinson
Date: 9/05/2010
September 11, 2001 will be a date synonymous to everyone as the day the world
Szymborska’s poem ‘Photograph From September 11” she describes the emotions of just
one horrific aspect of that day and has the reader remember the feelings they felt
The simplicity of the poem is very engaging in that it is an event that everyone
has a memory of in our generation, such as I am sure poetry wrote about the Vietnam
War and World War II would have been a strong memory for people in those times. What
I found appealing about the poem was that out of all the terrible events of that day she
focused the poem on just one aspect of that day, and the one aspect people steered away
from talking about. The images of people jumping from the World Trade Towers in New
York was an image that everyone saw when they turned on their television that day and it
was such a horrific thing to see that it really is one that no one will ever forget. Wislawa’s
poem is so moving that it takes the person reading back to that day, her description of
watching them fall and her narrative of what they must have been thinking during that
fall.
I felt Szymborska was saying the images from television and photographs taken
off these poor people falling has some how immortalized them in time. That they will
remain that way, falling through the air stuck for eternity. The following lines I think
describe this:
The interpretation and overall tone of the poem suggests that we as a society
halted that day and we became like the people in the fall, halted in time on that day for
eternity. From her description of the fall it was that the amount of time elapsed during the
fall may have been short in reality but to them must have felt like an eternity to them and
us watching:
With time to see the earth below them approaching and for personal possessions
to come loose which I thought could be a metaphor for them being stripped of personal
possession to be bare and exposed to everyone and powerless to prevent it, which in a
way was how we were as a western culture that day. During that fall the day to day
feelings of how we look to others and our personal dignity and opinions of others play
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such an important role, but that day stripped everyone of that people found solace and
peace in the arms of total strangers; everyone felt the same pain yet no one could describe
I was not living in America on that dreadful day but the emotions of that day were
felt by everyone world wide, and that is why I think this poem touched me as it took me
back to home in Australia. Remembering turning on the television and that image of
people falling being the first thing we saw and just the shock of it is something I will
never forget. I believe that was Szymborska’s purpose with this poem, so we don’t forget
what happened and to just take a moment and try to just wrap your mind around what
I thought the final lines of the poem were very touching and she shows her own
From these last lines I feel she is trying to pay respect without describing how it
ultimately ended for them. Like many that day her use of desperation in her words,
mirrors how we felt, there was nothing we could do or say that was going to make the
situation change or relieve the pain for the families who had lost loved ones. The use of
the word “flight” is interesting; could it possible our (as in Western culture) flight of the
11’ touching and relative to the times of turmoil we are in right now as a country and for
this to be wrote by a fellow non-American I found I could relate better as I know how
much it not only affected Americans on that day but everyone world wide felt the same
loss, pain and heartache. As Wislawa says “They’re still within air’s reach” (14), those
images will stay within reach to us for us to remember what happened that day and the
Work cited