Like the Covid-19 virus, poetry related to the pandemic has flourished. This anthology, which I am proud to have conceived and edited, adds to the literature of the pandemic in unique ways, capturing some of the best poetry on the topic in a moving, diverse and empathetic collection that includes noted writers and award-winning poets.
Contributors are wide-ranging. From well-known writer Marge Piercy to an Irish Franciscan brother, a prison inmate, an Indian poet, a geriatric care nurse, artists and educators, the poetry speaks to challenging times in which we must find our strengths and forgive our foibles.
There are 53 poets and 70 poems in this collection. Works range from the poignant to the practical. Ginny Lowe Connors writes in “Her Eyes,” about seeing her patients, “Above the mask, behind the face shield, eyes huge, red-rimmed, gritty, glassy.” Brian Daldorph considers “Love in the Time of Plague,” as a couple “sit on the beach together” although “they’ve been told not to do it, to keep distant, to wear protective clothing.” Scholar Rai d’Honore contemplates prior plagues, including “The Black Death … As nasty a death as can be…” Burt Rashbaum remembers being virus exhausted: “The simplest things: do I really need celery, how much dog food is left, is that a dry cough or do I just need a glass of water.”
The works in this collection bear witness and give universal meaning to shared experience. They help us remember, reflect, reconcile, and rejoice in small pleasures and new insights. They are each a story in verse, carefully composed, to create word monuments that quiet and comfort. In that way, they become gracefully therapeutic and healing while recording for future generations what it was like during a 21st century pandemic.
“These poems, varied in form and content, beautifully capture the global experience of this pandemic as well as the individual emotions and struggles that are, at the same time, unique and universal: fear, defiance, longing, grief, anger, loneliness, gratitude for time and respite, hope―and often, joy in life's small, continuing gifts. Editor Elayne Clift has gathered a community of poets whose words are haunting, moving, charming, surprising and, finally, comforting. Reading this anthology, you might find yourself saying, Yes, yes, I understand― I've felt that way too. I'm not alone.”
Cortney Davis, nurse practitioner; author of "I Hear Their Voices Singing: Poems New