Balakian Poems Recall 9/11

RFH 2010, Featured Articles, Arts

Sun, Sep 05, 2010

As the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaches, Colgate professor Peter Balakian explores the aftermath of the disaster in his new book of poems, Ziggurat. Balakian will appear on NPR's Weekend Edition on Sept. 11 and a poem from Ziggurat will be the Poem of The Week on PBS's The NewsHour on Monday.

"I think a poet's voice can be a contribution to the national conversation about 9/11," said Balakian, Constance H. and Donald M. Rebar Professor in the Humanities and professor of English.

In Ziggurat, which will be published Sept. 11, he wrestles with the reverberations of 9/11 through a lens of personal memory, history, and myth. The 43-section poem at the center of Ziggurat, "A-Train/Ziggurat/Elegy," won the Emily Clark Balch Prize for poetry from the Virginia Quarterly Review.

"This is a book about New York: the New York I knew when the twin towers were built in the late sixties, and the New York I saw when the towers fell," he noted.

The poem creates a mosaic of perspectives in which Balakian sees the towers as monument, a shifting symbol of capitalism, a simple workplace, and an imaginative zone of light, sound, and vision.

Ziggurat is Balakian's first poetry collection since June-Tree: New and Selected Poems.

Balakian, director of creative writing at Colgate, is the author of nine books including The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response, a New York Times notable book and best seller. His memoir Black Dog of Fate won the PEN/Albrand Prize and was a New York Times notable book.

Source: Colgate

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