Together in a sudden strangeness : America's poets respond to the pandemic / edited by Alice Quinn.
Material type:
TextPublisher: New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2020Copyright date: ©2020Edition: First editionDescription: xviii, 184 pages ; 22 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780593318720
- 0593318722
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | NonFiction | 811.008 T645 | Available | 33111010437610 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
In this urgent outpouring of American voices, our poets speak to us as they shelter in place, addressing our collective fear, grief, and hope from eloquent and diverse individual perspectives.
"One of the best books of poetry of the year . . . Quinn has accomplished something dizzying here: arranged a stellar cast of poets . . . It is what all anthologies must be: comprehensive, contradictory, stirring." -- The Millions
**Featuring 107 poets, from A to Z--Julia Alvarez to Matthew Zapruder--with work in between by Jericho Brown, Billy Collins, Fanny Howe, Ada Limón, Sharon Olds, Tommy Orange, Claudia Rankine, Vijay Seshadri, and Jeffrey Yang**
As the novel coronavirus and its devastating effects began to spread in the United States and around the world, Alice Quinn reached out to poets across the country to see if, and what, they were writing under quarantine. Moved and galvanized by the response, the onetime New Yorker poetry editor and recent former director of the Poetry Society of America began collecting the poems arriving in her inbox, assembling this various, intimate, and intricate portrait of our suddenly altered reality.
In these pages, we find poets grieving for relatives they are separated from or recovering from illness themselves, attending to suddenly complicated household tasks or turning to literature for strength, considering the bravery of medical workers or working their own shifts at the hospital, and, as the Black Lives Matter movement has swept the globe, reflecting on the inequities in our society that amplify sorrow and demand our engagement.
From fierce and resilient to wistful, darkly humorous, and emblematically reverent about the earth and the vulnerability of human beings in frightening times, the poems in this collection find the words to describe what can feel unspeakably difficult and strange, providing wisdom, companionship, and depths of feeling that enliven our spirits.
A portion of the advance for this book was generously donated by Alice Quinn and the poets to Chefs for America, an organization helping feed communities in need across the country during the pandemic.
In this urgent outpouring of American voices, our poets speak to us as they shelter in place, addressing our collective fear, grief, and hope from eloquent and diverse individual perspectives.As the novel coronavirus and its devastating effects began to spread in the United States and around the world, Alice Quinn reached out to poets across the country to see if, and what, they were writing under quarantine. Overwhelmed by the response, the onetime New Yorker poetry editor and recent former director of the Poetry Society of America began collecting the compassionate verses that were arriving in her inbox, assembling this various, intimate, and intricate portrait of our suddenly altered reality. Whether grieving for relatives they are separated from, recovering from illness themselves, attending to suddenly complicated household tasks, or considering the bravery of medical workers and the inequities in our society that amplify sorrow and demand our engagement, our poets are just like us, but with the words to describe what can feel unspeakably difficult and strange. From fierce and resilient to wistful, darkly humorous, and emblematically reverent about the earth and the vulnerability of human beings in frightening times, the poems in this collection provide wisdom and companionship, depths of feeling that enliven our spirits, and a poignant summoning to the page of spring's inevitable return.