Ralph James Savarese | 9781948509220 | $16.95 | 82 pgs | Pandemic | Health | Poetry | Release October, 2020 | Order now for a signed copy
From the Preface: The poems in this collection function almost like diary entries. Things are pulled from the news: Tony Fauci, the Orange Man, murder hornets, mask mandates, George Floyd…. You get a sense of real-time encounter and survival. But it’s not all worry beads or despair. Not by a long shot. Like the man on the cover, the poems aim for a touch of whimsy. They bring a single flower to the plague. They dress up. And they look to the future while, yes, wearing a mask.
“In When This Is Over: Pandemic Poems we see the imagination’s will at work. The twin of mind is not the body but breath. Who’s allowed to breathe? Who gets to dream of something—anything better? As D.H. Lawrence said, ‘When genuine passion moves you, say what you’ve got to say, and say it hot.’ These are very hot poems indeed.” —Stephen Kuusisto, author of Planet of the Blind and Letters to Borges
Follow this link to check out this poem from the book from Inside Higher Education
Ralph James Savarese is a professor of English at Grinnell College. He is the author of See It Feelingly: Classic Novels, Autistic Readers, and the Schooling of a No-Good English Professor (Duke University Press) and a book of poetry, Republican Fathers, published by Nine Mile Press.