A Different Distance by Marilyn Hacker

A Different Distance by Marilyn Hacker

An Indie Next Selection for December 2021

A Ms. Magazine Recommended Read for Fall 2021

In March 2020, France declared a full lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Shortly thereafter, poets and friends Marilyn Hacker and Karthika Naïr--living mere miles from each other but separated by circumstance, and spurred by this extraordinary time--began a correspondence in verse.

Renga, an ancient Japanese form of collaborative poetry, is comprised of alternating tanka beginning with the themes of tōki and tōza: this season, this session. Here, from the "plague spring," through a year in which seasons are marked by the waxing and waning of the virus, Hacker and Naïr's renga charts the "differents and sames" of a now-shared experience. Their poems witness a time of suspension in which some things, somehow, press on relentlessly, in which solidarity persists--even thrives--in the face of a strange new kind of isolation. Between "ten thousand, yes, minutes of Bones," there's cancer and chemotherapy and the aches of an aging body. There is grief for the loss of friends nearby and concern for loved ones in the United States, Lebanon, and India. And there is a deep sense of shared humanity, where we all are "mere atoms of water, / each captained by protons of hydrogen, hurtling earthward."

At turns poignant and playful, the seasons and sessions of A Different Distance display the compassionate, collective wisdom of two women witnessing a singular moment in history.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781571315519
ISBN 10	1571315519
Title	A Different Distance
Author	Marilyn Hacker
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Milkweed Editions
Year published	2021-12-14
Number of pages	96
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.