What I Said

by Norman Stock (2002)

What I Said

after the terror

I went home and cried and

said how could this happen and

how could such a thing be and

why why I mean how could

anything so horrible and how could

anyone do such a thing to us and what

will happen next and how can we live now

it’s impossible to understand it’s impossible

to do anything after this and what will any of us do now and how will

we live

and how can we expect to go on after this

I said and I said this is too much to take no one can take a thing like this

after the terror yes and then I said let’s kill them.

Questions to consider:

  1. The poem was published in a collection titled Poetry after 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets. How does this information affect your reading of the poem?

  2. How is the rhythm of this poem affected by its lack of punctuation?

  3. Explain how repetition is used to contribute to the poem's tone.

  4. Describe the shift in the final line. What does this shift suggest?

Short-Response Questions

  1. Write a well-developed paragraph in which you use ideas from both Passage I (the poem) and Passage II (Beowulf, lines 237 to 284) to establish a controlling idea about dealing with adversity. Develop your controlling idea using specific examples and details from both Passage I and Passage II.

  2. Choose a specific literary element (e.g., theme, characterization, structure, point of view, etc.) or literary technique (e.g., symbolism, irony, figurative language, etc.) used by one of the authors. Using specific details from either Passage I or Passage II in a well-developed paragraph, show how the author uses that element or technique to develop the passage.