This is a heart-wrenching poem that radically recontextualizes Rengetsu’s Tanka (short poems) by juxtaposing it with sounds and voices from the September 11, 2001 attacks. The poem’s title animation presents the letters in the title descending and coalescing into words that reflect on a suggested surface below, using a background of soft night colors, the moon, and night sounds. Three things subvert the serene initial scene: the night sky contains a jet’s vapor trails, and for a few seconds, a highly transparent image of the burning Twin Towers fades in and out right before the date 09.11.01 appears.
This juxtaposition and superposition in time and space of images, sounds, and words is the main strategy for constructing a powerful mix of frames of reference, separated by gulfs of time, place, and human experience.
Featured in Poems That GO.
