ABSTRACT
Wisława Szymborska's poem “Photograph from September 11” (“Fotografi a z 11 Wrzesnia”) begins with one of the least poetic images from that day: “They jumped from the burning stories, down /—one, two, a few more / higher, lower” (69). The fate of the people who leapt from the World Trade Center is a particularly terrible subset of the events in New York on September 11, 2001. 1 Two weeks afterward, Anthony Lane wrote in the New Yorker that “The most important, if distressing, images to emerge from those hours are not of the raging towers, or of the vacuum where they once stood; it is the shots of people falling from the ledges.” The people falling from the WTC were the most visible victims of the disaster in New York City on 9/11, and their very public deaths registered as especially dreadful. Psychological studies after 9/11 singled out witnessing falling people—live or on TV—as a major predictor of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): this, of the many upsetting images from the day, had a lasting traumatic effect on some viewers. 2
