Tragedy Through Time

Lilacs functions as a journey, both for Lincoln’s funeral procession, and more importantly, for Whitman’s own emotional struggle to deal with Lincoln’s assassination, the horrifying violence of a civil war, and a damaged democratic ideal that, like so many of the young men of the country at the time, lay wounded and bleeding with uncertain prospects for survival. If great poetry is to create a “simulacrum of reality,” as Cleanth Brooks put it, Whitman succeeds beautifully. The psychological process of dealing with death and tragedy is complicated, chaotic, and oftentimes, completely illogical. Similar to Lilacs, there ultimately is no “solution” to this process and every time you feel that you are approaching a spot of stability, the emotional and spiritual ground beneath your feet shifts and your healing process must start again anew. Despite the frustration of this process, I believe Whitman ends Lilacs on a note of hope where he states that through confrontation and contemplation of tragedy you may achieve, if only temporarily, a moment of bliss, a moment where lilac and star and bird twine with the chant of your soul. It is these moments you strive for, and despite their inherently fleeting nature, it is these moments that carry you with hope to the blooms of the following spring.

As a resident of lower Manhattan during 2001, I feel a close personal connection with the events and aftermath of 9/11. It is through this lens and the lingering presence in my mind of Whitman’s Lilacs with which I read a number of the 9/11 poems contained on the Library of Congress’ website. Whitman’s presence in many of the poems is palpable. Some go so far as to quote Whitman directly, such as Galway Kinnell’s When the Towers Fell that uses lines both from Lilacs as well as City of Ships. While I found Kinnell’s poem to be most directly tied to Whitman’s Lilacs, I wanted to comment briefly on two other poems I enjoyed from the group: Billy Collins’ The Names and Martin Espada’s Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100. The Names recounts the poet’s experience with the actual names of those who perished in the towers. Similar to Lilacs, which begins with a description of “the black murk” of the night and Lincoln as the “great star”, The Names begins in “the palm of the night” as the poet lays awake in his bed visualizing the names of the dead which are “printed on the ceiling of the night.” Collins goes on to use a number of techniques reminiscent of Lilacs, including significant flower and tree imagery as well as the use of all of his senses in experiencing the personal impact of the names of the dead. The Names ends with the poet’s resignation regarding his ability to effectively deal with the tragic events of 9/11 questioning the “room on the walls of the heart” to appropriately pay homage to “so many names.” These final lines remind me of Whitman’s struggle to appropriately decorate Lincoln’s burial house: “O what shall I hang on these chamber walls?”

I also see Whitman (although mostly I just like the poem) in Espada’s Alabanza in which Espada seeks to provide praise for the 43 members of at the Windows of the World restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center who were mostly Latino immigrants, many of whom were undocumented. Unlike the names of others who died in the tragedy of 9/11, most of the names of these workers were unknown and never appropriately recognized in the aftermath of the events. Similar to Whitman’s ongoing focus on the working man, Alabanza seeks to recognize and praise these common workers and forgotten heroes of 9/11. Stylistically, Alabanza reads like a song or ritualistic chant which reminds me of the “song” or “carol” of the hermit thrush in Lilacs. Espada ends Alabanza referencing the “two constellations of smoke [of New York and Kabul]… mingling in the icy air” reminding us of the universal experience of death and tragedy that we as humans must deal with regardless of cultural background.