Sense and memory

I've been editing old poems this week, which involves a lot of revisiting past trauma, folly and craziness. It's hard work, exhausting, frustrating, confusing. Sometimes the past becomes clearer with distance; sometimes it makes less sense than ever. But there is something in us that insists on explanation, resolution, context--some hole in the tooth of the brain where the tongue will probe, willy-nilly, until it is filled with the artificial amalgam of narrative. A similar process is underway everywhere these days as the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaches. Part of me resists remembering the pain and horror of the day, part of me insists on finding a way to frame the horror in sense. While the consequence of getting the process wrong in a poem is small--one more flawed poem to shove back in the drawer--the consequences of how we tell ourselves the story of 9/11 could be written in blood and fear upon all the pages of the 21st century. Think long, write short, don't hurry.