Category pandemic

The Friday Poem: ‘How Will This Pandemic Affect Poetry?’ by Julia Alvarez

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

Last spring, author Valeria Luiselli accepted the British Rathbone Folio Prize for her novel, ‘Lost Children Archive’. She spoke of the writer’s responsibility, “whether a science-fiction writer, a journalist, a poet, each at their own pace and within their own capacities, to document this moment”.

“We are going to need this narrative fabric, some sort of fabric for us to lay down once we overcome this.”

One expression of this “narrative fabric” is the recently published poetry anthology, ‘Together in a Sudden Strangeness’ edited by Alice Quinn.  

The Friday Poem selection for this week is Julia Alvarez’s ‘How Will This Pandemic Affect Poetry?’ As we reimagine our priorities ‘after’, framed by our experience in the ‘before times’ and pandemic isolation, where will art reside? 

How Will This Pandemic Affect Poetry?

Will the lines be six feet apart?

Will these hexameters be heroic like Homer’s?

(Will) (each) (word) (have) (to) (be) (masked) (?)

Will there be poetry insecurity?

Will there be enough poetry to go around?

Will poems be our preferred form of travel?

Will we undertake odysseys searching for Ithacas inside us?

Will poetry go viral?

Will its dis/ease infect us?

Will it help build up antibodies against indifference?

Will poems be the only safe spaces where we can gather together:

            enter their immense silences

            see snakes slithering inside sestinas, 

            listen to nightingales singing on the boughs of odes –

            hark! a lark in the terza rima,

            a hawk in a haiku?

What if only poetry will see us through?

What if this poem is the vaccine already working inside you?

Julia Alvarez

April 27 – May 8, 2020

Weybridge, Vermont

‘Together in a Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic’

Alice Quinn, editor    Alfred A. Knopf, New York    2020

March 4, 2020

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

A year ago I traveled to NYC for the last time, keeping a lunch appointment with a colleague. It was a beautiful day, spring was in the air and the forsythia was in bloom – bright yellow against a monochromatic backdrop. I snapped a few photos of the city that day. I selected one as my smart phone screen-saver, where it remained, for months, a relic of the ‘before times’.

On the upper west side, children still bounded out of school buses on the way to museum tours. On the surface, life was normal; but it wasn’t. The school children were wearing masks. I was wearing a mask. The streets were quieter. Central Park was empty. A security guard outside the restaurant offered hand sanitizer and then returned to a repetitious cleaning of surfaces. 

I walked 38 blocks instead of riding the subway. Being above ground seemed safer. I used stairwells instead of elevators. I stepped into one shop, but immediately left. There were mysteries in the air and social distancing was about to enter our vocabulary. I had read my share of apocalyptic novels. 

I watched a segment on the evening news where a doctor offered tips to stay safe. Following his directions, I had a supply of Kleenex in my pocket to use as my magic barrier when I opened a door. Those were the early days. But they’re not hard to recall. The fear has stamped a permanent record on my brain, totally accessible even after a full year has passed. Information was scarce and contradictory. Life was changing before my eyes, but the leadership narrative ran counter to reality. 

A year later, the security guard, waiter, diners, school children, docent, parking attendant, toll collector, news agent, retail store staff weave a vivid human GPS thread of that day. All part of a pre-pandemic collage of ‘New York moments’ on the edge. There was joy and laughter on March 4, 2020, a touchstone.

Today, March 4, 2021, more than 80 million doses of vaccine have been administered, reaching 15.9% of the total U.S. population. By May, there will be a sufficient supply for every American adult. What will work and workplace look like as we emerge?

And then we came to the middle…

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

“Are we there yet?” could be the quote of the pandemic. The answer is no. The problem hasn’t been solved, although we continue to pretend it has. Just take a detour past your local food bank and you’ll experience an instant reality check on expectations. A visit to your local post office might offer a clue to what your workplace might look like if you ever return.

We stayed inside… for a time. And that eased the crisis in many ‘hot spots’ for hospitals and health care professionals. But then we got tired of ‘stay at home’. We saw folks venturing out and government leaders relaxing rules. But the problem hadn’t been solved. We’re still in the middle. Research into a vaccine is progressing, but testing still lags, and nothing has really changed from those early weeks in March. The virus is still out there seeking every opportunity to sink its ‘hooks’ into our various critical organs. What has changed is our belief that “we can handle it” – the reward far outweighs the risk – FOMO on career and life. 

We’re not an ‘in limbo’ culture of humans. Uncertainty is not our strong suit. We avoid commitments that might exceed 200 pages or two weeks. We’re more at home at the movies where all is resolved in 90 – 120 minutes.

But, COVID. Our momentum slowed. It took a bit of time to adjust – to the quiet, the change in energy, the middle. 

Here we are in a place with time to observe and reflect – an unscheduled leave of absence from our previous life – in the home of innovation and creativity. Yes, the middle is where imagination carves out our path to ‘THE END’.

A simple ‘construct as creative catalyst’ was provided by former Irish president and High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson at the Edinburgh Book Festival in 2019. Speaking on the topic of climate change (insert your idea) she suggested three steps:

‘Make climate change (or your idea) personal in your life.

Get angry and get active.

Imagine this world we want to hurry towards.”

Imagine the world we want to hurry towards – that’s what we do when we’re in the middle. 

That’s why we’re here at the nexus of past and future – not to consider a ‘new normal’, but to invent the unimaginable. And that takes time – the time we have now, in the middle.