A Dispatch from “Journal of the Plague Year”: The Black Swan [by David Lehman]

I write in self-imposed isolation. The Corona virus that originated in Wuhan, China, and is spreading with the speed of a medieval plague, has mandated “social distancing,” a phrase now commonplace. In Wall Street lingo, we have suffered a fearful “black swan event” that no economic model could have forecast. The shock to our systems of living and of thought has not yet been fully absorbed, but already the stock market has tumbled, main streets look like ghost streets, schools are closed, colleges have sent their students home, the NBA has shut down, “March madness” was canceled, and spring training, too. Even politicians have taken notice. Emergency measures are taking effect. The effort to create an effective vaccine is under way. We can hope that an antidote is in a chemist’s test tube even now. Medical scientists are doing their best to “flatten the infection curve” – to limit the spread of this ultra-contagious virus that has already killed many thousands of people and caused whole nations to close down.

Confined to quarters, I have the luxury of thinking about this plague in relation to those in our literature and history – the ten plagues god visited upon the Egyptians in Exodus; the plague Oedipus brought on Thebes when he committed the twin sins of parricide and incest; the bubonic plague that decimated Europe in the fourteenth century. It is possible to regard the current situation allegorically as a punishment we have brought upon ourselves or possibly as a prophecy of geopolitical warfare or a radical solution to the problem Malthus posed. Whatever else it is, the disaster is also a failure of the imagination inasmuch as we were as unprepared for it as we were at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The reassuring thing is that we did win the war that we entered on that day.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, W. H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939” gained a new currency. The most famous line of that poem – “We must love one another or die” – was brutalized in an opinion piece in today’s New York Times (March 19, 2019), which substituted “help” (and “assist”) for “love.” The more important point is that Auden’s poetry endures. Poetry matters. American poets will be living through a crisis worse than any in my lifetime, and how they respond to it will prove a fascinating test and challenge.

Comments

[Michael Robert Foldes]

I am regularly amazed when I hear how difficult it is for so many to find something to do with themselves just because they have been advised to not go out of doors. We as a people, a nation, a global community might take the opportunity we have now -- sequestered and secluded -- to recover the lost world of imagination and relearn how to put it to good use as we await return to "modern times." Read, write, paint, draw, play chess, trim the roses, work on the car... I mean, what's it take?

[Caroline Seebohm]

Brilliantly said. Perhaps it is the shock we needed to recalibrate what it means to be human. Caroline Seebohm

[[email protected]]

Today, it’s March 21st,
spring equinox
and Morning Brew declares
‘‘tis
World Poetry Day!
Listening to our ticking
Ithaca
Calendar Clock
I am grateful
for its tock.

Carolyn Clark

Poetry in motion...but also in stillness...in love
that waits and waits, and still cares.

[Jacqueline L.]

Yes, and then some. What do people do who can't just eat what's in the fridge and scribble on a pad (or, more likely these days) on a computer? I'm a historian, former activist in resistance to a dictatorship and in the women's movement of the 1970s--as well as a teacher and poet--and I challenge everyone to think: Who profits from this confusion, paralysis, disintegration of regular activities and interruption of the supply chain? Where are the unions clamoring for economic equity? Where are the progressive Democrats insisting on fair elections and exhibiting strong leadership? Where are the executives of giant corporations? are they cutting their own bloated salaries so that workers can get by? are they clamoring for income tax reform (back to the good old days of...Eisenhower) to fund the public coffers that enable basic services for all? (They're certainly not jumping out of skyscraper windows.) And who does their laundry? For that matter, dear geezers reading this blog, who does yours?

[Michael C. Rush]

And how sad that so many need to.

[Kent Johnson]

One small suggestion on something very fulfilling to do indoors--it's a bit of a lost pleasure, by and large, and with so many surprises waiting, it is its own kind of cultural/civic White Swan:

Spend more time listening to your local NPR station. And send them a small contribution.

[Robert Schultz]

Activity suggestion (something new): If your printer has a scanner, look in the yard, garden, potted plants, or even a junk drawer. Place item on scanning bed with lid up or off. Darken room. Scan. The result may be interesting. Cheers, RS

[Robert Schultz]

For examples, see https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10100588660157558&set=ms.c.eJxdzskNxAAMQtGOIryC~_29sjglzfULfDgQw0i5iOKMnXkFS4cJkmkRy~%3BzZN0jfHdtEtXG7m~%3BLpmw~_UO0lcyWrMmJcE3DaG~%3BUthgmbCnrNOpS~%3Buwt8tvtVBp5cHQyxPglneuevUDIpRMJg~-~-.bps.a.10100588660007858&type=3&theater

[Mary Stewart Hammond]

To Michael C. Rush, and Caroline Seebohm: Exactly!!!! I feel guilty. With so many in misery, I am happier in quarantine than I have ever been in my life. Time to read,to write,to catch up on the pileup of unread literary journals where I am finding fantastic poems! Time even to learn FB.