This project examines the memory work of sites of public remembrance that were loci of national controversies, at least in large part, because of their untimeliness. Rather than reading untimeliness as merely a matter of the passage of either too much or too little time, I argue that it is also a forceful rhetorical production. To explicate this argument, the study begins with a discussion of kairos primacy in rhetorical scholarship and how a deconstructive theorization of memory work as both rhythmic and tropological enables rhetoricians to think the untimely anew. The project then turns to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and National September 11 Memorial Museum, sites that were respectively lamented as overdue, premature, and out of sync with time all together. The dissertation concludes by considering the implications of the aforementioned studies for ongoing conversations about rhetoric, public memory, and the politics of time. The aim of the project is thus to offer a different way to think about rhetorical temporalities, how they are produced, and their social and political entailments.