Poetry in the Time of Covid

Sandra Cisneros says that “poets are in the professions of transforming grief into light.”

On some level, we all feel grief. In Eastern medicine, they believe that grief settles in the lungs. I have asthma, so I find this particularly interesting. I wonder how grief has affected my lungs, and how poetry could possibly help excavate stuck grief.

Covid-19 is a respiratory disease, so perhaps we need to pay attention to the connection of grief and lungs. I wonder how poetry could help us excavate our own grief. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could all clear our lungs and heart from grief, and transform it into something beautiful and tangible?

Poetry– metaphor, truth– help us do that.

Write on.

Photo by Karim Manjra on Unsplash

Summer Koester is an award-winning writer and an educator, artivist, and culture disruptor in Lingít Aaní, "Land of Tides," a.k.a. Juneau, Alaska. Her words have appeared in New York Times, The Sun, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Huffington Post, Insider Magazine, The Independent, and various buses around Juneau.

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