Philip C Kolin

Americorona Philip C Kolin

The poems in Americorona track the history of COVID-19 in the US from late 2019 to early 2021--how the pandemic affects America medically, economically, spiritually, and psychologically. There are three types of poems in seven sections in Americorona. Leading each section are poems about other historical pandemics (cholera, Black Death, polio, Irish Potato Famine, Pharaoh's plagues, etc.) that foreshadow or parallel the tragic events ushered in by COVID-19. The majority of poems, however, are about COVID-19 tragedies--how the pandemic started, how it impacts children and minorities, how it resulted in hunger and increased discrimination, how it brings out naysayers, how the medical community is dealing with the pandemic. Interspersed among COVID-19 and historical poems are experimental ones on such topics as the "memory of breathing" or the "exhaustion of monotony" during the pandemic.