And the People Stayed Home

“How Will This Pandemic Affect Poetry?” by Julia Alvarez (2020)

This is a poem included in Together in a Sudden Strangeness: America’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic (edited by Alice Quinn), which also features O’Meara’s poem. Alvarez reflects on the relationship between poetry and the pandemic, concluding that poetry may help people to live through and survive the pandemic.

“Plague Poem” by Katha Pollitt (2020)

In this poem, also included in Together in a Sudden Strangeness, Pollitt puts the pandemic in the context of other unwelcome news that floods TV screens, and gives voice to fatalism and the sense of defeat that all bad news occasionally engenders: Perhaps the planet would be better off without the human species.

“Invocation” by Major Jackson (2020)

Another poem featured in Together in a Sudden Strangeness, “Invocation” is a kind of prayer invoking images of nature and of people living their lives free from the pandemic in the past and, hopefully, in the future.

“The Daily Round” by Kitty O’Meara (2011-present)

This is Kitty O’Meara’s personal blog, where she has posted many of her poems. “On Healing,” posted on January 10, 2022, is a reflection on how nature teaches important lessons about healing and accepting pain as a necessary component of life. “New Year’s Eve,” dated December 31, 2021, asserts that hope and cheer are essential in tough times like the ongoing pandemic.