Witnessing Language: Charles Bernstein and 9/11

The aftermath of the 9/11 attacks was a heyday of public poetry. Poetry was published in newspapers and new forms of media in an amount unseen since the 1960s. Reminiscent of the public poetry of the beat era, poetry slam, or public poetry reading happenings were reawakened. Since then, several anthologies of 9/11 poetry have been published (e.g Johnson and Merians 2002; Cohen and Matson 2002; Heyen 2002), and during the last fifteen years the term 9/11 poetry has become almost a cliché in American literature. In its own terms, 9/11 poetry also reflects the divisions and problems in representing