Different Distance

An Indie Next Selection for December 2021A Ms. Magazine Recommended Read for Fall 2021In March 2020, France declared a full lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Shortly thereafter, poets and friends Marilyn Hacker and Karthika Narliving mere miles from each other but separated by circumstance, and spurred by this extraordinary timebegan a correspondence in verse.Renga, an ancient Japanese form of collaborative poetry, is comprised of alternating tanka beginning with the themes of tki and tza: this season, this session. Here, from the plague spring, through a year in which seasons are marked by the waxing and waning of the virus, Hacker and Nars renga charts the differents and sames of a now-shared experience. Their poems witness a time of suspension in which some things, somehow, press on relentlessly, in which solidarity persistseven thrivesin the face of a strange new kind of isolation. Between ten thousand, yes, minutes of Bones, theres cancer and chemotherapy and the aches of an aging body. There is grief for the loss of friends nearby and concern for loved ones in the United States, Lebanon, and India. And there is a deep sense of shared humanity, where we all are mere atoms of water, / each captained by protons of hydrogen, hurtling earthward.At turns poignant and playful, the seasons and sessions of A Different Distance display the compassionate, collective wisdom of two women witnessing a singular moment in history.