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How does the creative unconscious process trauma and catastrophic loss? Why do people need to write about it, and how is trauma transformed into artful expression? Does art serve the artist the same way it serves the observer?
Writing is a most natural place to express feelings of cataclysmic proportion in an attempt to process and understand what happened. I called Peter Cooley, a professor of Creative Writing at Tulane University, asking if he had any poems on Hurricane Katrina. “Are you kidding,” he said, “we have so many. We are looking for people to hear us.” Their meeting place had been destroyed by the hurricane so they had been meeting as nomads at numerous places around town. Professor Cooley asked students and colleagues to send poetry, stories, and autobiographical encounters.
Lives were lost. Personal histories were lost. But now people are slowly returning. Neighborhoods are rebuilding. Time is distorted. Was it three weeks ago or two years? People will be all right in the city, but it is a different city now.
The people of New Orleans would very much like their poetry read. They feel that much of America has forgotten them. So here are their voices.
Bonnie Zindel L.C.S.W.
Creative Literary Editor