Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

The artistic response to 9/11, such as it is, has been uneven, to put it charitably. But before we rush to condemn artists for ignoring or not "imagining" the catastrophe, we should bear in mind that its reality then, and its ubiquity since then, might be such that no artistic response is possible. Yes, Springsteen sang and Stone directed and Jay McInerney wrote, but the reaction to their works has been tepid because the works themselves have not been regarded as "great". Perhaps it's simply too soon. One day, maybe, someone will write a poem as good as that penned by Anne Sexton.

Riding the Elevator Into the Sky

As the fireman said:
Don't book a room over the fifth floor
in any hotel in New York.
They have ladders that will reach further
but no one will climb them.
As the New York Times said:
The elevator always seeks out
the floor of the fire
and automatically opens
and won't shut.
These are the warnings
that you must forget
if you're climbing out of yourself.
If you're going to smash into the sky.

Many times I've gone past
the fifth floor,
cranking toward,
but only once
have I gone all the way up.
Sixtieth floor: small plants and swans bending
into their grave.
Floor two hundred:
mountains with the patience of a cat,
silence wearing its sneakers.
Floor five hundred:
messages and letters centuries old,
birds to drink,
a kitchen of clouds.
Floor six thousand:
the stars,
skeletons on fire,
their arms singing.
And a key,
a very large key,
that opens something —
some useful door —
somewhere —
up there.

Anne Sexton (1928-1974)

Despite the alcoholism and the mental illness that scarred her life and ultimately led her to suicide, Anne Sexton managed to create a body of poetry that won a Pulitzer Prize. Her sorrowfulness continues to find a community of readers, and Riding the Elevator Into the Sky, written some 40 years before 9/11, is remarkably prescient and pertinent.