Poets Marilyn Hacker and Karthika Naïr, living mere miles from each other in Paris, were forced like so many to reckon with isolation despite proximity during the pandemic-necessitated lockdown of 2020. Their response became A Different Distance: A Renga, a collaborative collection drawn from Japanese poetic tradition. That spring, the friends began exchanging poems, responding every few days to each other's words throughout that unprecedented year and into March of 2021. Like passing a baton in a relay, each poem picks up a word or phrase from the close of the one before, carrying it into its lines, transforming it into something new. This technique increases the feeling of dialogue, not just between the poets but between the poems themselves. The result is a vivid correspondence and an emotional archive of the particularities of those days.
In addition to the realities of lockdown, the two poets write the rest of their experiences into being, from chemotherapy and trips to the baker to watching TV and worrying about family and friends abroad. While some of the references may be unfamiliar to readers in the United States, the reality of shared loss--"Grief edged by new,/ enforced distance, by/ the lack of touch, of last rites"-- or the bright laughter of children at play--"COVID-Age/ tag in our courtyard:/ not more than two at a time"--will reinforce shared experiences. Spare but alive, these poems capture the common feeling of isolation and distance and the importance of human connection. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian