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Full Description
A remarkable debut collection that chronicles the experience of anxiety and anguish in the face of COVID-19.
As a front-line physician, M. Cynthia Cheung started writing poetry during the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her remarkable debut collection, Common Disaster, chronicles these experiences. Confronting not just the coronavirus but also war crimes and the death of loved ones, Cheung shows us that the pandemic is only one of many disasters we hold in common. In poems that look to both the past and future, she takes a stand against the extinction of self and memory, challenging the violence of erasure.
The period covered by the book is geologic and vast. It examines present-day evidence of ancient human activity and natural history, including the Lascaux caves, asteroid craters, tar pits, and Viking ruins. The poems include ghazals, thoughtful free verse, and work that takes up the page in reframing classical Chinese oracular texts to situate the pain of a doctor in crisis.
As a physician-poet, Cheung asks us to see beyond the every day to the devastating truths about the human condition.
Contents
Boreal Time
I
Ghazal
I Have Seen My Death
Common Disaster No. 1
Notes in a Minor Key
Aubade with Chicxulub Crater and Extinction
Charles Darwin to His Wife, Emma, 1851
Two-Headed Dog
The Amount of Death and Pain in the City was Extraordinary
People Are Sad
a supreme court opinion, June 24, 2022
Ghazal
The Last Surgeon in Mariupol
We Would Welcome a Full Investigation into This Matter
Bosworth Field
Concerning a Crushed Temple
II
The Yijing: a pandemic apocrypha
Afternoon Rounds
Forms of Water
Common Disaster No. 2
X-Ray
The Shores of Babylon
Ghazal
Kalends
Time & Again
I Dream of Animals During the Pandemic
Seeing My Patient's CT Scan
After the Diagnosis
III
Diorama
Ghazal
Summer Palace
Sand-People of Sutton Hoo
Islandic
Common Disaster No. 3
Ensenada
The Blue House: a Feng Shui Portrait
I Wonder as I Listen to Beethoven's Symphony No. 9
Grotto
After My Daughters Tell Me They Are Learning How to Identify Animals at School
Sightseeing
Dream of the Astrobleme
Incarnation
Kite
Ghazal
Still Life
Acknowledgments
