"Violence Has Changed Me" Private Trauma and Identity Crisis in Post-9/11 American Poetry

This article seeks to explore into the impact of 9/11 tragedy on the private lives of ordinary people and individuals and into the associated theme of identity crisis, as reflected in four important post-9/11 poems – “Someone Says They Looked Like Cartwheeling Birds” by Lyn Lifshin, “Making Love After September 11, 2001” by Aliki Barnstone, “Surviving” by Pat West and “October” by Louise Gluck. As such an impact and identity crisis are inseparably related to trauma, it is quite legitimate to examine this issue in reference to trauma theory and, especially, the concept of “belatedness”, although the first two poems are not clearly connected to this theory. My article, ultimately, attempts to demonstrate the points that identity crisis in the last two poems, basically, results from a subtle tension between the present and the past selves of the speakers, who seek to move beyond trauma, and that all these four poems make an intense appeal to us by creating something eternal out of shocking human loss and sufferings