I like to think of it as projective journalism. Maybe it’s becoming a lost art to write and publish history with deep perception hours after events happen, but Susan Zakin and her crew at Journal of the Plague Years have created an anthology that in part serves as, Mikal Gilmore describes it, “…an historic record that needs to be preserved.” The anthology is A Journal of the Plague Years and it is available online. I am delighted to have work in it and delighted that my poem, and a few other poems, are not put in a poetry ghetto, as poetry is usually presented, but next to other extremely intelligent and perceptive pieces of writing. The contributors include Jami Macarty, Maxine Chernoff, Lauren Camp and others.

As a larger and larger number of people and organizations “flood the zone with shit”, we have to lean on trusted sources outside of the corporate media landscape who, in part, created the monster(s) that JoTPY was responding to so eloquently on their blog during Covid-19 and now with this book.

An example:

If you’re still trying to make sense of what happened during the Covid-19 pandemic, if you want to experience a blast from the past to help you feel good about what you survived, or if you just want to read perceptive writing about our current time free of the clutches of capitalist b.s., buy. a copy of this journal.