INTRODUCTION

 

 

This was the year of obsolescence; dozens of black boxes appeared on the screen in lieu of faces. Everyone longed for the intimacy of a gaze, a hug. 2020-2021, the year of Covid-19, offered the opposite—at-home learning (hybrid, at best)—where young people stared at their screens all day long. Often embarrassed, students turned off their cameras and muted themselves while attending school in the confines of their bedroom, sometimes even their bathroom. Many were plagued with loneliness and desperation. This was the year of juxtapositions—yes, there was horror, yes, there was grief, but at the end of a long and hard year, there was also hope. We had to dig ourselves out of the quagmire to discover this. No one understands this better than our featured guest-poet, Nathalie Handal. In her poem “Flames at Herr Mountain” she shares:

“History has a way of
moving the heart backward
A way of moving it forward
To protect its past, its tired mind.”

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This backwards, forwards movement propelled our whole year, so she concludes:

 

“Like the laughter cutting breath
in half to save itself a piece
of what still beats inside.
Alive as dead.
Dead and alive—
one bird after the other, chirping.
There is no God, but God,
no desire but wind,
caught deep in a mountain
trying to rise to an earth that awaits
the opening of flames
we wish we’d seen before.”

 

In this world of opposites, every climb up the mountain is met with a fall into the abyss, says Rubya Ali in “200,000 Tests and 120 Dead”:

 

“You think Covid won’t get you
But it could get you at any moment

So I am isolated.”

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At the end of the poem, Rubya tells us, “Suddenly, I am carrying the family. My older brother says he feels, “Death in my body.”

 

Even middle school students have suffered. Courtney Molina, a TAG eighth grader, tells us in “Pandemic Poem”:

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“We are going through pandemics right now
One physical and one mental
A constant battle quarantined inside you
But soon one day we will make it outside.”

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Another middle school student, Ayan Pai, shares in “Untitled”:

 

“I step outside,
The streets are silent.
I listen closely.
The birds chirp cheerfully.
I step back inside
Back into the void,
When will life go back to normal?
Who knows
The Big Apple has finally gone to sleep.”

 

Fourth grader Axel Robert Eagly Cohen from Ella Baker School tells us in “The

 

Virus”:

“As quiet as the flight of an owl
As hungry as a lion
The Virus
is a snowy owl
quiet
deadly
cunning.”

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It was not just a year of “cunning” Covid, but also political and personal grief, compounded by the isolation. Political unrest fermented to epic proportions, and suddenly people paid attention to the injustices of race and class, possibly activated by the inequalities perpetuated by the virus. In Biannca Boucher’s “Light Doesn’t Always Equal Right” (Central Park East High School) she tells the reader:

 

“Let me take you back to where this all began, where light skin became the “right skin” since it got you into their house, though it never got you off their land. They saw melanin as a beast, so when you looked more like them, you were no longer treated as bad as the least….when will we repaint our own image, stepping away from division, but letting these vibrant shades of black, let this be our momentum in making provisions, that our black excellence will take us further, when we finally get their voices out of our head,

 

When we learn that light skin and white skin isn’t a preference, but a colorless delusion that they have sewn in with a racist thread.”

 

Indeed, so much is problematic in the world, but writing helps us to alter our perspective, challenging the injustices. Language is our cry-out, and in this way, it paves the way for a world of possibilities, “A hope in the unseen.” Now it is June; spring is here, summer is around the corner, and the world is opening up. There is a vaccine to help prevent the spread of the virus, and children have returned to school. According to Iman Rahman in “Now is the Time to Run” (William Cullen Bryant High School):

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“The monster you’ve finally been able to wake up
Of freedom you’d never be able to reach
Laugh until the devil rips out your tongue
Smile
Clutch at your broken parts
Let them know they’ve served their purpose
Hum yourself a familiar tune
As your eyes close.”

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Things are looking up: students are resuming their after-school activities; younger children are playing in their once-locked parks; high-schoolers are attending their proms—a far cry from 2020 when all life had been canceled. Poets wrote their way out of sorrow and attended the 49th Annual Poetry Festival on Zoom. And we have many people to thank for this: City College’s Division of Humanities and the Arts, Dean Erec Koch; Renata Miller, Acting Deputy Dean; President Dr. Vince Boudreau; Tony Liss, Provost; Karen Witherspoon, Vice President, Office of Government and Community Affairs; Gregory Shanck; Dee Dee Mozeleski, Office of Institutional Advancement; Annika Luedke and Diana Ward, The Foundation for City College; David Covington and the Alumni Foundation; Elizabeth Mazzola, Head of the English Department; Michelle Valladares, MFA Director; Axe-Houghton Foundation; Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation; The South Wind Foundation; Bonnie Marcus, Poets & Writers; The City College of New York office of support services, with special thanks to Taki; David and Harianne Wallenstein; Gregory Crosby, Assistant Director, Alyssa Yankwitt, Development Coordinator and Chief Mentor; Amanda Reiser, Administrative Assistant; and finally, Barry Wallenstein who birthed this whole wonderful organization. These organizations and people have made it all possible. They are our “hope in the unseen.”

 

In the world of “Waxing” Felicia Jennings-Brown tells us:

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“Sometimes I wonder if I went out before
more empty-than-full silver sphere had
sunk beneath the skeletal trees,
blooms forgotten on a chair,
if I would have noticed Polaris
drew a diamond pointing to
Mars, my face, the hope.”

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This is what poets are capable of doing—digging their way through the buried rubble and bringing possibilities to the page. Be well and stay safe!

 

Please join us next year on May 6th as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Poetry Outreach.

 

Pam Laskin June, 2021