Viral

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Steve Gerson's latest collection moves from light to dark. It begins with the kind of love poems that could only be written by someone who has loved for a long time. They are rife with powerful images that show us true love doesn't have to fade: "your hands in mine as small as birdsong" or "stay with me as long as ink and paper remember." In part two, Gerson shatters us with images of loss like "seawater salt, like acid rains, eroded her resolve into fissures" or "like planting corn in concrete." The final section of the book, "Lost, " takes the reader through the experience of various speakers who suffer trauma. Throughout the book, Gerson experiments with form, most notably with the erasure poems in the "Lost" section. This book begins with bird song, but it ends with an AK 47 and the Apocalypse. This great collection of poems is a knockout." -Dr. Beth Gulley, author of I Am Your Fish Drowning In Air: Love Poems "Albeit an optimist, this poet writes truthfully about the trying times we have all been living through. Recently, we have been forced to make frequent pivots - pivots to plans, to rules, to procedures, to hopes, to change. Love and losing and loss are the felt arc of this chapbook. This poetic arc suggests continued inspiration for the next phase - finding peace and love and hopefully solutions beyond the madness. Gerson writes, "but overflowing onto pages into our future written" in Chapter 1. These words hint at a positive conclusion beyond Chapter 3." -Dr. Stefani G. Buchwitz, Director, Self Graduate Fellowship, University of Kansas "Steve Gerson's evocative poems immerse the reader in what it means to love in our unsettling times. The first of three sections, "Love, " transitions from the enclosed and timeless world of the lover and his beloved to our present-day, digital world where a love letter, no longer handwritten, can be deleted in an instant. "Losing, " the middle chapter, begins with classic impediments to love: unfaithfulness, lack of communication, illness. The intrusions in "Lost" switch from the personal to the world at large: homelessness, racism, climate change, 9/11, Covid, and hanging over it all, the digital world which we have embraced. Throughout, striking images highlight the progression from love to loss as the poems move from the beloved, "your hands ...as small as birdsong" to a bride wearing "toxic mascara" to a teacher, "a little lady wearing a reindeer sweater" and wielding a gun. Timely and thought-provoking, energetic and perceptive, Gerson's poems are a testament to the challenges love faces in our viral world." -Edie Cottrell Kreisler, Professor Emeritus of English, Merritt College, Oakland, CA. "This second volume of rhythmic incantations cements Steve Gerson's standing as a foremost American poet. Exuding sensuousness, pathos, and prescience, Viral: Love and Losses in the Time of Insanity brilliantly captures the urban landscape amid the pandemic as expertly as its counterpart, Once Planed Straight, evokes enduring images of the heartland. Gracefully and poignantly etched, Viral contains fifty-two exquisitely drawn poems nested in the pristine arcs of "Love, " "Losing, " and "Lost." The braided themes range from enduring love to vaccine refuseniks to the national shame of school shootings involving 'another child another child, ' as Gerson eloquently weeps." -Dr. Robert Cottrell, author of Izzy: A Biography of I.F. Stone