There Was a Clattering As...

Poetry. California Interest. The pandemic is a fact, a metaphor, an archetype, an epoch-changing moment of history, and an occasion for collective soul-searching. In this various, long, and haunting text, including much direct and bent quotation from a variety of works, Norman Fischer takes the reader on a swerving ride through space and time (ancient Rome, biblical Jerusalem, Elizabethan and 16th Century England, 17th Century Portugal, 19th Century France, etc.) that seems, with patient logic, to be building toward a conclusion about what pandemics are about, and where they lead us. This breathless poem pokes at the limits of meaning as it explores what what we call religion has to say and not say about it.