Narrating Trauma after 9/11: Women's Response through Oppositional Poetics

Abstract

This study focuses on poetry after 9/11 by exploring it as an example of counter narrative and embracing the concept of “oppositional poetics”. The inquiry touches the aesthetic challenges that the oppositional practices face in the contemporary literary panorama, by concentrating on three pivotal themes: gender, guilt and the belonging to history. The case study under examination investigates a selection of poems by American women authors, including Molly Peacock, Shelley Stenhouse, Anne Marie Levine, Alicia Ostriker, Jean Valentine and Patricia Spears Jones. The discussion expands to touch the trauma of 9/11 in the broader context of the implications of global terrorism, considering its influence on the perception of the artistic experience.