A commemoration of 25 years since 9/11 at Rollins College will feature former U.S. Poet Laureate and author Billy Collins reading his poem, “The Names.”
As poet laureate at the time of the attacks, he was commissioned to write the poem for a special joint session of Congress in New York the following year.
He read it before the lawmakers of both chambers as part of the solemn ceremony in 2002.
Friday night’s community remembrance at Rollins’ Knowles Chapel, which also includes performances by the Bach Festival Choir and Orchestra and participation by city officials, will be one of only two other public occasions that Collins will read “The Names” again.
Now 85 years old, Collins recalls that when he was first called by congressional committee members and asked to write a poem that could speak to a nation still reeling from the events of 9/11, his first response was no.
“I said that to them, and there was quite a long silence,” Collins remembered, “and I broke it by saying, ‘Well, I'll show up, and I'll find someone else's poem to read.’”
It wasn’t that Collins doubted his own talent or that he didn’t want to write the poem. He just wasn’t sure his poetic style was right for the enormity, gravity, and subject of the job. “My poems…are not about national events. I don't chase the headlines. My poems are about walking the dog, or eating an apple, looking out the window at a bird, those kinds of weighty matters,” he said dryly. “So, I didn't think I could do it.”
But once he settled on writing an elegy for the victims and weaving in some names in alphabetical order, “The Names” was born.
“There are a number of little, almost one- or two-line scenarios of seeing the names on a poster, on a mailbox, the name being a monogram on a shirt collar, that kind of thing,” said Collins.
When he found that there was no last name that began with an x, Collins wrote, “Let x stand, if it can, for those not found.”
“It was very moving going to Ground Zero much later and actually finding the names carved there that had been in my poem,” he added.
Collins said he hopes that, on this occasion, people reflect on the sanctity of their lives.
“Poets have been ringing this bell ever since poetry began, and the bell is the bell of carpe diem, of seizing the day. We don't have much time. ‘Our ground time will be brief,’ as one poet said, echoing the airline announcement. I remember a couple saying, we were going to get married next year…and [now] we're going to get married next month. So, a lesson in the perishability of life.”
