Reading Szymborska in a Time of Plague

<p>Written during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic Joan Baranow's <em>Reading Szymborska in a Time of Plague</em> contemplates the dread uncertainty of our life. Describing hospitalized sufferers she writes: A patient no longer struggling is wheeled away. / Another sits up accepts the bent straw between his lips. Likewise her tough-minded yet always loving vision of domestic life invites us to inhabit a level of self-scrutiny that leaves us heartened even if also often troubled. And yet despite the losses mourned throughout this book the poet's humor and hopefulness prevail. In Advice from a Moth she exhorts us to enjoy the erratic path. Deeply satisfying Baranow's unaffected language is as clear and natural as a tumbler of spring water. She possesses a scrupulously honed poetic gift that is precious and rare.</p><p> </p><p>Arnold Rampersad Stanford University</p><p>Author <em>The Life of Langston Hughes </em>(2 vols.)</p><p> </p><p><br></p><p>Joan Baranow's <em>Reading Szymborska in a Time of Plague</em> opens with poems about months of isolation with her spouse and college-age son during the 2020-21 pandemic. Instead of anger or boredom her poems express tenderness with images of care and repair. They explore the natural world paying special attention to shunned creatures: an iguana that lost its tail insects even a baby rat whose life she spares. In Baranow's sequence Summer Ghazals she asks herself about mysteries of illness life and death. A series of heart-thumping elegies follows soon after the ghazals. Read this wonderful book. Read all of it from Traveling in Tiger Rain to its final poem Prayer where she implores: Let quiet hours pass without a stir / while the earth repairs. </p><p> </p><p>Susan Terris</p><p>Author of<em> Familiar Tense</em></p><p><br></p><p>I'm there as much as here Joan Baranow tells us staring into a Japanese print. In richly musical and compassionate poems Baranow reconciles our daily lives with our desirous imaginings: most of life comes at you / while scrambling eggs in the pan. Whether writing elegies or confronting her own mortality Baranow leans toward community for consolation and renewal taking note of trees sending mycorrhizal / messages underground // like teenagers vibrating / under their clothes. Literary political and erotic <em>Reading Szymborska in a Time of Plague </em>considers What blunderous creatures we are / holding cell phones to our heads the poet's voice brimming with anxiety and affection.</p><p> </p><p>Michael Waters</p><p>Author of <em>CAW</em></p>