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Artists Look Back
Reflecting on 9/11 in Word, Song and Visual Form
Sept. 11, 2002 -- As part of its coverage of the anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, NPR invited a range of artists -- actors, poets, musicians, visual artists -- to talk about works they've created in response to the tragedy. The following is a sample.
 Liam Neeson, actor
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"...I cannot isolate that date from my early years of coming of age in war-torn Northern Ireland, where murder, mayhem, hatred, injustice and not a little fear were everyday occurrences..." -- reading from his entry in the book New York September Eleven Two Thousand and One
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Vern Rutsala, poet
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"We edge toward the lives inside just before the crash then wince away..." -- reading his poem "It Keeps Happening," from the anthology September 11: West Coast Writers Approach Ground Zero
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Beth Baldwin, theater prop maker
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"Ultimately we don't know who received our quilt, but it felt nice to make something and then give it away." -- discussing an employee project at The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C., to create a quilt for a family of a World Trade Center victim
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Diana Abu-Jaber, writer
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"...The flier called for a rounding up of all Arabs. He hadn't realized I was one of the ones he wanted rounded up..." -- reading an excerpt from her entry, "On Recognition and Nation," in the anthology September 11: West Coast Writers Approach Ground Zero
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Matthew Modine, actor
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"Breathing deep, the lungs fill up with souls floating..." -- reading from his poem, "Breathe" in the book New York September Eleven Two Thousand and One
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Richard Dreyfus, actor
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"We have stolen something of incalculable value from our children that will never be recovered, as invisible as it may be..." -- reading from his entry in the book New York September Eleven Two Thousand and One
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Lucy Kaplansky, singer/songwriter
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"Thank you in a child's scrawl, taped to the Third Street firehouse wall..." -- performing "Land of the Living" on CBS' The Early Show
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Shira Dentz, poet
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"On the third day, gone the smoke to breathe from, gone the black funnel to a hovering like a swarm." -- reading her poem, "Blue Skies"
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Suzzy Roche, musician
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"Can we push the clouds of fear apart and rest our sadness on thy heart?" -- singing "New York City," with her sister, Maggie Roche, from the album Zero Church
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Miranda Beeson, poet
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"Where had he come from? A pet store in the shadow of the towers? A tiny door unlatched by the blasts?" -- reading her poem, "Flight," from the book Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets
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Christopher Brown, car artist
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"People wrote all over the car. They wrote 'God bless America' and 'give peace a chance.'" -- describing what happened when he left his 1985 Chevy Celebrity parked near New York City's Union Square, urging passers-by to scrawl messages on the vehicle days after Sept. 11, 2001
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