April is National Poetry Month, and this spring the Academy of American Poets, which has hosted the National Poem in Your Pocket Day since 2008, urged readers of their website to share verse that’s provided them with “courage, solace, and actionable energy” during this time of social isolation. The Humanities Center has made the event a tradition at Carleton, and once again faculty and staff members sent in their favorite works, written by poets from across time and around the world, including Elizabeth Alexander, Dorothy Parker, Lucille Clifton, and Emily Dickinson.
Susan Jaret McKinstry, Carleton’s Helen F. Lewis Professor of English, wrote the poem below, one of three poems submitted for the event by chaplain Carolyn Fure-Slocum ’82.
Liminal
One so timeless so common
deep-rooted mortal so cradled
in public rituals and offerings
grasped hands shared tales and casseroles
then kept silent and sharp
in each sole startled heart
One all insistent present
alerts updates notifications news
webbed networks insights opinions
cool screens illuminating our bowed faces
scanning now now now
Now in this strange time
this here abruptly ours we veer
hourly from timeless to present
each shared and split with rising
numbers algorithms infodemics
surveillance and safety and still
the weight of not knowing the wait
for what may come has come will come
As if grief made manifest
fills empty skies shops streets
concrete seas of nothing
doors shut shuttered desolate
Now vacant space divides the swift end
of before from the unimaginable next
held in horizons of all we see
read feel hear text on busy screens
clutched in our palmed hands
Each death distinct and whole
each number tallying the chasm between here
and gone as we sit isolated and stunned
between grief and technology.
—Susan Jaret McKinstry