Poetry? No thanks.

The thing about poetry is that it so frequently diminishes the topic it’s meant to address. For example, the concept of love has all but been murdered by bad poets pontificating on broken hearts and ‘deep’ emotion. 9/11 is too important a topic to be subject to such destruction. Poetry can also be particularly inaccessible, which I think diminishes its value as a means of representing post-9/11 culture. Even the densest of comics with the most sophisticated commentary and references has accompanying pictures to flesh out the point it makes. Additionally, 9/11 culture is intertwined with certain images – starting with the towers collapsing on that date, continuing through the invasion of American flags alluded to in Spiegelman’s comic and Katha Pollit’s column and today with newscasts of war in Iraq. It is harder to convey thoughts about images –- satirical or otherwise -- without actually seeing them. And if it is satire that’s meant to be conveyed, then I would argue that I think poetry does not go well with satire. Without complete sentences, it’s sometimes difficult to detect sarcasm.