Try To Praise The Mutilated World

Imagine this- It’s a Tuesday morning, and you’re at work in the North tower of the World Trade Center in New York. Suddenly, out of the sky you can see a commercial airliner flying right at you. You have less than seconds to react, but it’s too late. The last thing you see is the nose of a plane coming right at you. On September 11, 2001, four American planes were hijacked by terrorists from the group Al-Qaeda. Two of the planes were crashed into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center in New York, One was crashed into the Pentagon in Washington D.C, and the last plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania on its was to an unknown destination. Nearly 3,000 people were killed, including over 400 officers and the 19 hijackers. This was a major event in American history, as the attacks of 9/11 were the deadliest attacks on US soil in our country’s history.

The historical poem I chose for this project is called Try to Praise the Mutilated World, by Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanagh.

The poem I wrote for this project is called Rise Up, by Jaime Pedrow.

America is strong. We have been knocked down repeatedly, and yet we are still here, even stronger

He repeats the phrase “praise the mutilated world’ four times over the course of the entire poem, although in a different urgency and/or demanding tone each time. The first time, the poem tells us to “Try” and praise the world, then onto “You must”, then “You should”, then finally just “Praise the mutilated world”. What this means to me is that as life goes on, we are pressured and pressured into glorifying this broken world, even as more terrible accidents and attacks happen-- even to the point where we have no choice in speaking out against it. I think that the theme for this poem is that as long as we live in America, we will always be expected to praise it, no matter how broken it