How does one write about the COVID pan­dem­ic, or about liv­ing as a US cit­i­zen in an increas­ing­ly trou­bling atmos­phere? Renowned poet Ali­ca Ostriker’s new col­lec­tion of poems aims to do both these things.

In sev­en groups of poems, Ostrik­er gives voice to where we are now in beau­ti­ful­ly direct and some­times terse free verse. She also dra­ma­tizes a spir­i­tu­al jour­ney through the shat­ter­ing expe­ri­ences of the past few years to a hard-won hope. 

The begin­ning of the col­lec­tion details how COVID time breaks itself down into indi­vid­ual moments:

As I dai­ly wipe

each piece of mail

with Clorox

before open­ing

to pro­tect myself from the virus

I wish I could wipe myself clean

of envy

of anger

symp­toms of anoth­er lifelong

con­ta­gion illness

(from ​“Plague Time II”)

Else­where, the lyri­cal ​“I” strug­gles with a feel­ing of numb­ness that imper­fect­ly cov­ers over a deep sense of loss. But the poet’s work does not stop with these pow­er­ful obser­va­tions. Rather, her con­cen­tra­tion on the small and imme­di­ate ush­ers in an inten­sive search for the divine amid the gaps and shat­tered spaces of pan­dem­ic con­scious­ness. Accord­ing­ly, the col­lec­tion winds its way through ora­cle and para­ble toward prayer: 

The force that sends light

Through the cracks

In every­thing

Needs eyes to see

[ … ]

May your eyes see the beauty

and sor­row of the world

clear­ly and keen­ly oh

and may light lead you to love

(“Prayer”)*

Ostrik­er is sub­tly ref­er­enc­ing Leonard Cohen as she per­sists on her jour­ney toward spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion. Her voy­age is also present in a reread­ing of bib­li­cal texts and reg­is­ters as a cel­e­bra­tion of elder wom­an­hood. In ​“The Old Woman Reads Eccle­si­astes and the Song of Songs,” Ostrik­er inter­ro­gates bib­li­cal exe­ge­sis at the same time that she insists on human agency to repair our bro­ken world. Here, the fem­i­nine prin­ci­ple of G‑d enters the scene with ener­giz­ing force:

Shekhi­nah help me

to love with­out cause with­out cease

help me believe

exis­tence is itself bliss

bro­ken and we

alone required to mend it

Through the Shekhi­nah, frac­tured COVID time is re-under­stood as a series of spir­i­tu­al inter­stices: as chan­nels, caves, and door­ways where the divine can man­i­fest as a smil­ing presence. 

In the final poems, Ostrik­er looks beyond even the fem­i­nine aspect of G‑d and toward a strik­ing mys­ti­cal vision, which is enhanced by a new­found sense of awe and humil­i­ty. Her lyri­cal quest for light offers read­ers a stun­ning poet­ic roadmap with which they can find their way home to the con­tem­pla­tion of divin­i­ty — at its most gen­er­ous and all-encompassing. 

*Our for­mat­ting dif­fers from the orig­i­nal poem.