Together in a Sudden Strangeness, Alice Quinn
Together in a Sudden Strangeness, Alice Quinn
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Together in a Sudden Strangeness
America's Poets Respond to the Pandemic

Author: Alice Quinn

Narrator: Edoardo Ballerini, Gisela Chípe, Catherine Cohen, Michael Crouch, Catherine Ho, Hillary Huber, Nicole Lewis, Dani Martineck, Prentice Onayemi, Elisabeth Rodgers, Neil Shah, Shayna Small

Unabridged: 3 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/17/2020


Synopsis

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.

About The Author

ALICE QUINN, the executive director of the Poetry Society of America for eighteen years, was also the poetry editor at The New Yorker from 1987 to 2007 and an editor at Knopf for more than ten years prior to that. She teaches at Columbia University's School of the Arts and is the editor of a book of Elizabeth Bishop's writings, Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments, as well as a forthcoming book of Bishop's journals. She lives in New York City and Millerton, New York.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Deb (Readerbuzz) on April 29, 2021

Just look at the titles of the poems in this collection, and it's obvious 2020 was a different sort of year: After the Apocalypse Sequestration Sheltering in Place Corona Diary I See on Zoom He's Growing... Six Months from Patient Zero Today, When I Could Do Nothing At CVS Wearing a Mask I Buy Plastic Easte......more

Goodreads review by Ginny on July 24, 2020

Poetry to Fight the Virus This is an ambitious collection of poems reflecting a specific point in time. One thing we are learning as this pandemic drags on is that it feels different from week to week so poems from April almost seem like ten years ago. These feel New York-centric and back when people......more

Goodreads review by Noel نوال on April 19, 2021

This is a poetry collection of American poets that came together and wrote various poems about the beginning of the pandemic. The poets come from all backgrounds and walks of life. I really loved some of the poetry in this collection full of power, emotion, and commemorating a period that will end u......more

Goodreads review by Autumn on January 18, 2021

I think I liked the idea more than the poems themselves. Perhaps it is still too soon to travel back to these moments as the situation is still quite the same. It may age well.......more

Goodreads review by Amy on February 05, 2021

Some of these were so poignant and raw that I had to out the book down for several days, some were eh, meh. Overall, I loved that they exist and are timely and made me feel so completely.......more


Quotes

“Quinn’s collection covers remarkable ground . . . throughout, poets interrogate the use of their work and the limits of the imagination when reality presses in.” —Clare Bucknell, The New Yorker
 
“Timely . . . From fierce truths to dark humor, readers can share in the experience of being delighted and illuminated through this essential, urgent poetry anthology that addresses the fear, grief, and hope felt in these times.” Poets & Writers

“Together in a Sudden Strangeness offers beautiful poems about every fact of life that’s changed in this pandemic: Grief, fear, hope, loneliness, awe, bravery, and everything in between.” —Book Riot
 
“This collection appears at the exact moment when the nuanced and profound nourishment it offers may be needed most. . . Both cathartic and challenging, Together in a Sudden Strangeness provides an early glimpse into how literary writers will discover new form and language to convey the unfolding perils of this unprecedented time.” —Emily Choate, Chapter 16
 
“This collection of poems helps to reiterate our vulnerability and capacity of resilience and finding beauty and hope in the world around us in the direst circumstances. The day will come when reading these words again will remind us how it was living through this surreal period and that together we have survived it.” —Marco De Ambrogi, The Lancet
 
“A welcome collection of creative healing.” —Andrew Jarvis, New York Journal of Books