Together in a Sudden Strangeness

Early this spring, as the coronavirus forced a sudden suspension of normal activities, it also acted as a powerful accelerant for the production of poetry. Artists metabolizing loss, fear, anger, confusion, and love in real time began writing and sharing their work via email and social media posts. One result of this prolific poetic engagement is a new and extraordinary anthology, Together in a Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic, edited by Manhattanville alumna Alice Quinn ’70.

A former poetry editor of The New Yorker and recent former executive director of the Poetry Society of America, Quinn succeeded in assembling eighty-five works from a diverse group of American poets, including Ada Limón, Joshua Bennett, Billy Collins, Cornelius Eady, Evie Shockley, Li-Young Lee, Major Jackson, Susan Minot, Vijay Seshadri, and Yusef Komunyakaa. According to Quinn, she was first tapped to gather and edit the poems by her former New Yorker colleague David Kuhn, a literary agent. “He saw that people were emailing poems to each other, and he called and asked, ‘What do you think about an anthology of poems about this moment?’” Within 24 hours, Quinn was scrolling through her contacts.

“I’m very aware of poetry’s impact and power in a dramatic time,” said Quinn, recalling the profound connections readers felt to poems published by The New Yorker immediately after 9/11, including “Try to Praise the Mutilated World,” by Adam Zagajewski and “I Saw You Walking,” by Deborah Garrison.

To begin curating poems quickly while also casting a wide net, Quinn relied on a kind of crowd sourcing: “That very day, on March 27, I included an ‘Anthology wish list’ which I sent with my appeal to 125 poets asking, ‘If you know of anyone who is writing poems addressing this moment whom you admire and who is not on this list—and there are a lot of poets who aren’t—would you please recommend them and send me their email addresses?’” She received another 120 names and within a few weeks was corresponding with well over 200 poets. Once the poems started coming in, the book sprinted from conception to gestation to delivery in exactly forty days. The symbolic weight of that length of time wasn’t lost on Quinn, who pointed out that it was not only biblical, it also mirrored the original quarantino imposed in medieval Italy during the bubonic plague.

Curiously, the works are arranged in alphabetical order by the poets’ surnames. Quinn admitted that this choice might have had a “shortcut aspect to it” but that once they were assembled, this editorial decision revealed unexpected serendipity: The book actually runs from A to Z, with lines that begin and end the book as if they were assigned to do just that. It starts with open-ended questions that Julia Alvarez asks in her poem “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) (?)”—and concludes with the tender last lines in Matthew Zapruder’s “Poem for Rupi Kaur”—“I love my son/his little bear pajamas/my wife/the grass/the ends of poems.”

Although the anthology is technically whole and complete, Knopf Senior Editor and contributing poet Deborah Garrison suggested that Quinn “keep the barn door open” for more submissions that were sure to follow; and, in fact, Quinn already has twenty more poems in hand. The first published iteration of the anthology is an eBook from Knopf and an audiobook by Penguin Random House, both of which were released on June 9. A hardcover of the anthology is slated for release in November along with a simultaneously updated eBook available to all who buy the eBook now. The technological feat of this, Quinn said, “charms but mechanically eludes” her.

Whatever form this anthology might take in the future, however, Quinn believes it will remain both timely and timeless. Even as the initial shock of the pandemic fades and new traumatic events grip the nation, Quinn said that the poems born from the pandemic will continue speaking with power and relevance because these poems “intrinsically speak to the issues of inequality,” she explained. “It’s the unequal access to health care and groceries and jobs and money and a roof over your head,” she said. “Everything that is going on right now, was tucked into the pandemic moment.” Night squall raging, black branches batter every window as the sky lashes the city. Without devices, all I can do is shelter in place— & wait the latest nightmare out, find other sources of power as I sit in the dark save for a candle burning for my mother writhing in an ICU & for the world to make it against all odds. In every sense, I burn in the unseen places, head filling with smoke, each hour lived in a dense haze.

Millions weather this 21st-century unholy Passover, homes bereft & singed forever. The unruly rich in charge deign themselves gods, maniacal & merciless. Every warning unheeded, no bona fide mark of protection this time, no choice in the losses raining almost everywhere.

Candlelight for two is a date; I faintly remember those. Candlelight alone is a séance— forgive me, my dearly departed for crying out so often, for still needing you so damn much.