‘To Say What Could Not Be Said’

Abstract

Though post-9/11 metapoetry effectively represents the critical reality of 9/11, there has been no concerted scholarly study of this subgenre of poetry so far. In this article, I wish to examine three post-9/11 metapoems to attain a bipartite aim. First, I want to demonstrate that, through a much more sophisticated metapoetic subjectivity than is found in many ‘belated’ post-9/11 poems, these three poems enact the crisis of language and the difficulty of representing 9/11. Second, I would like to formulate a theory of post-9/11 metapoetry based on the analysis of these poems and the consciousness of their twentieth-century counterparts to indicate a new aesthetic stage in the representation of crisis in metapoems. My article conveys the ultimate message that post-9/11 metapoetry overcomes the crisis of representation in a way that transcends the particular event of 9/11 and becomes a general aesthetic mode of speaking the unspeakable in the face of any ineffable traumatic experience.