[Joydeep ChakrabortyParticipant @joydeep27681]

You are indeed right to point out the illegitimacy of categorising 9/11 poems into ‘early’ and ‘late’. In making such distinction I was partly guided by Introduction to Literature After 9/11 by Ann Keniston and Jeanne Quinn, which makes a distinction between ‘earliest’ and ‘later’ 9/11 poems. But now I understand that such distinction is not quite valid.
It is interesting to address your question as to the comparison between post-9/11 poetry and the English poetry spanning from 1914 to 1930. However, I think the comparison would be more appropriate, if we compare post-9/11 poetry with the English poetry from 1914 to 1939,that is, modernist poetry. Both of these types of poetry have been conditioned by two important historical phenomena – 9/11 and World war I – that challenge traditional interpretive framework. Therefore, both of them entail fragmented mode of perception, trauma, an acute of sense of loss and so on. Moreover, both are characterised to an extent by intertexuality – for example, The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, When The Towers Fell by Galway Kinnel, and so on – that resists any easy interpretation of the world. However, modernist poetry never attempted to represent the unrepresentable – a task that post-9/11 poetry undertakes.
Finally, I have a request to you. Would you like to write some research paper in collaboration with me?

[Joydeep ChakrabortyParticipant @joydeep27681]

Please, respond to my last correspondence quickly. I am yearning intensely for a response.

[Joydeep ChakrabortyParticipant @joydeep27681]

Sir,
I am quite worried about your silence, and would be greatly obliged if you send some response, for you see how ardent I am in writing some research paper in collaboration with you.
Joydeep Chakraborty

[Joydeep ChakrabortyParticipant @joydeep27681]

Sir,
Did I offend you by asking about collaboration? If I did, I am deeply sorry for it. Now, let’s resume our previous discussion and, please, communicate with me as soon as possible.
Joydeep Chakraborty

[John Edward StreamasParticipant @hideko121531]

Oh no. I have been, and continue to be, extremely busy with several ongoing projects, including the writing of a book proposal. I would have no time or opportunity for a collaboration for quite some time. Moreover, I sense that your knowledge of contemporary poetry greatly exceeds mine. I know several writers’ work fairly well, but don’t keep up nearly as much as I would like with the vast range of English-language contemporary poetry. I am much more knowledgeable about contemporary fiction.

 

[Joydeep ChakrabortyParticipant @joydeep27681]

I am sorry to know that you are extremely busy at present, but we can still resume our academic discussion when you feel free of any burden as I appreciate your critical insights. In the meantime, could you refer me to any specialist in the field of 21st century American poetry, who may be willing to collaborate with me? Please, note that it is urgent- something essentially related to my career.

[Joydeep ChakrabortyParticipant @joydeep27681]

I understand that you are extremely busy at present, but it is urgent. Could you refer me to any specialist, who may be willing to collaborate with me?

[John Edward StreamasParticipant @hideko121531]

No, I’m afraid that in my department (Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies) the people who keep up with contemporary lit are fiction people. Personally, I know no one who reads contemporary poetry very much, or at least who writes much about it. In fall, in my Introduction to Asian Pacific American lit class, I will assign the new book of poems Afterland by Mai DerVang, the Hmong poet whose book was praised in the New Yorker a week or two ago. I’ve assigned in the recent past collections by Bao Phi and Craig Santos Perez, both of whom have a wonderful presence online in videos. But they’re more concerned with ongoing, ambient injustices, not the single episode of the sort represented by 9/11. (I realize that that attack could be read as a culmination of long-running historical animosities, but it is most often studied, by critics across the ideological spectrum, as an exceptional event. And it is that very exceptionalizing to which I object, and to which I would respond with comparisons and contextualizations against other “events.”) I wish I could be more helpful, because I think your project is very interesting. But I can think of no one with whom you might work.

[Joydeep ChakrabortyParticipant @joydeep27681]

Are you busy still? I have sent you my recent research paper on spectral consciousness in post-9/11 American poetry, and looking forward to your valuable feedbacks.

[Joydeep ChakrabortyParticipant @joydeep27681]

Please, inform me whether you have got my article. I have also uploaded it to CORE repository.

[Joydeep ChakrabortyParticipant @joydeep27681]

Now I am working on a new topic. It is on the exploration into the question as to whether some post-9/11 poems on Afganistan in An Eye For An Eye Makes the Whole World Blind, like “The Weavers”, “Burqa Women” and “Kabul 2002”, can be read as an implicit response to Orientalism by Edward Said. Please, comment on it.

[Joydeep ChakrabortyParticipant @joydeep27681]

Sir,
It’s been long since you talked to me. I wish you all the best on your book-proposal. Now I am working on a topic which you may find hihgly interesting. It is whether the poems on Afganistan in An Eye For An Eye can be read as a creative response to Orientalism by Edward Said. It would be great if you talk to me as soon as possible.

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