9/23/2023 0 Comments Julia alvarez poemsYou’re talking about the writing about poetry and the role of poetry. Candlelight / alone / is a séance– / forgive me, / my dearly departed / for crying out / so often, for still needing you / so damn much.” So that feeling of grief is very, very strongly there, too. There’s a wonderful poem by a poet named Kamilah Aisha Moon, whose mother was in the ICU unit in March, and her poem ends, “Candlelight for two / is a date I faintly remember those. In fact, the last one by Matthew Zapruder ends, “I love my son / his little bear pajamas / my wife the grass / the ends of poems.” So it’s interesting that the book begins with the subject of poetry and ends with the ends of poems. So there are some poems that really address poetry. And what is so serendipitously fascinating to me is that the collection of poems goes from A to Z, and Alvarez’s poem starts, “How will this pandemic affect poetry?” “Will the lines be six feet apart? … Will there be poetry insecurity? Will there be enough poetry to go around? … Will it help build up antibodies against indifference? … What if only poetry will see us through? What if this poem is the vaccine already working inside you?” The poem that opens the book is by Julia Alvarez. What struck you? And give us maybe a few examples of lines or poets. There are poems that are about the craving for touch, for humanity. Of course, people are very aware of their surroundings. As I was reading, I was just making a list of themes: longing, people writing almost sort of diaries of their day, nature. So the correspondence swelled pretty quickly. And also they recommended other poems to me. Some of them wrote back and said, “I don’t have a poem.” And then two weeks later, I did get a poem from. She said, “Poetry is a way of thinking with one’s feelings.” And so we know that poets are going to be thinking with their feelings. It makes me think of a formulation of Elizabeth Bishop’s letter to May Swenson. And we want windows to be opened and to see what each of us is feeling. And we have poems about the spring and apocalyptic poems and lyric poems and poems of parents to children and of children bothering their parents - just a very wide variety and a huge diversity and ethnic background, which, I think, we all need community at this point. And so we have lighter poems and wry poems and jaunty poems and poems tinged with dread. I simply said, “Have you recently been writing a poem about this moment?” And I think that’s why the variety is so strong, because whatever your temperament and your sensibility in your circumstance is quite different. You’re asking poets to sit down and write something new about their feeling, their experience, their thoughts, what they’re seeing. I’m curious what the assignment was, in a sense, because this is unusual. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. Quinn spoke with the NewsHour about how some poets weren’t immediately inspired to write something, and how poetry can help us navigate this global crisis. Morín writes that a pandemic was all it took “to turn the world into a pineapple upside-down cake.” (Of course, social distancing has inspired many a quarantine baking pursuit, in addition to poetry.) “Will poems be the only safe spaces where we can gather together,” she writes. In her poem, Julia Alvarez wonders how poetry itself would be affected by the pandemic. There are meditations of grief and isolation, and the experience of observing vacant public spaces from our windows while being ordered to stay home. Amit Majmudar, who is also a doctor, shares a dispatch from the front line of medical workers fighting against the virus, writing, “At sign-out last Friday, we didn’t say bed numbers. In one poem, Jim Moore notes the death of a friend before writing that he can’t think beyond the three items on the list in his head - cheese, almonds, eggs - once the grocery store opens.
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