Pandemic Poetry: 31 Days by Christoffer Petersen

Abstract

Reviewed by: Pandemic Poetry: 31 Days by Christoffer Petersen Anthony D'Aries (bio) pandemic poetry: 31 days Christoffer Petersen Aarluuk Press https://christoffer-petersen.com/book/pandemic-poetry-31-days-pandemic-2020-1/ 42 pages; Print, $7.99 "They closed the Danish borders on March 14, 2020 at 12 p.m. These 31 poems comprise a personal snapshot from a sealed-off Scandinavia, from the first day until the last." There is a false certainty in the back-cover copy of Christoffer Petersen's collection, Pandemic Poetry. A false certainty that many of us relied on throughout the pandemic and perhaps still do. The illusion that we understood the timeline from the beginning. That we only had to hunker down for days or weeks. But weeks turned to months, months to years, and our collective sense of time changed. As we continue to navigate our own country's rules and regulations, our relationship to time seems to have simultaneously evolved and deteriorated. It is the tension between those two terms—evolution and deterioration—that gnaws at the reader throughout the thirty-one poems in Petersen's collection. The opening poem, "Signs," conveys an initial sense of fear and confusion. Homemade signs taped to the automatic door of a supermarket. We don't learn exactly what is printed on the signs, but we understand that it is a warning, a warning that stuns the narrator, forces them to stand and watch the sign slide back and forth as the door opens and closes. "Eyes scanning as the words disappeared / Much like the gel from the shelves." The narrator stands at the entrance in disbelief. This moment eloquently captures how many of us felt in the early days of the pandemic—an inability (unwillingness?) to believe what was happening. What does dawning panic feel like? When do the signs around us begin to make sense? Perhaps there is no better image for the start of the pandemic than a confused person standing in front of an empty shelf at the grocery store. "The Pharaohs took cats and dead slaves / Filling their tombs with trinkets / Like you fill the car with toilet paper / And your forty loaves of bread." As [End Page 29] the collection progresses, a poem like "To the Hoarders" reveals our latent greed and selfishness. How quickly confusion becomes panic becomes self-preservation. But much like our false sense of control over the pandemic's timeline, the hoarding offers the illusion of security. Petersen presents another powerful image: "And you complained at the lack of masks / But, seriously, you haven't the time to wear them—/ You've got to get your teeth into forty loaves of bread." We sacrifice ourselves and each other with our impulsivity. We become a ship sinking under the weight of its own cargo. "When you've stuffed the freezer / And filled the kitchen shelf / Will you build a Viking burial mound / With all those loaves of bread?" Petersen's poems show us how the pandemic infected our language, forced new terms into our vocabulary, gave familiar words new connotations. "Distance" no longer meant a path between two points, but only the six feet we had to keep from each other. In his poem "Streaming," he refers to a small stretch of water behind the narrator's house, a place the geese use for shelter, but inside, the narrator "streams" Star Trek. The word "stream" loses its connection to the natural world and becomes purely virtual—the films and series and books and podcasts we absorb in isolation. Here we see the shift from the exterior world of the supermarket to the interior world of the home. Netflix becomes a verb ("Netflixing ourselves / Away from the corona crisis"). Later in the poem, the word "stream" shifts again, refers to runny noses, the color and consistency that reveals infection. By the end, the common definition of "stream"—a body of water—has vanished. While we expect a collection of pandemic poems to be bleak, chaotic, and isolating, we also know, having lived through the past two years, that there are unexpected moments of hope. In "The Orchard," Petersen reminds us that routine is comfort. The narrator...