Poetry review – APPEAR TO DANCE: Charles Rammelkamp finds Linda Kleinbub’s poetic diary to be a powerful reminder of life amid the COVID pandemic
Appear to Dance
Linda Kleinbub
Pink Trees Press Press, 2024
ISBN: 979-8989869541
106 pages $20.00
Reminiscent of Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, which chronicled the devastation of the bubonic plague in London, 1664-1665, Linda Kleinbub’s new collection is likewise a diary of a year of havoc, the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020-2021 – the illness, the death, the lockdown, the isolation – but set in New York City instead of London. In her Notes at the beginning of Appear to Dance Kleinbub informs us that she wrote every day in an attempt to make sense of the pandemic experience, to find some kind of order in the chaos.
A New Yorker, Kleinbub endured the epicenter of the plague in the United States, which first tore through New York City beginning in March of 2020, before much of the rest of the country was affected. Kleinbub’s journal starts in the spring. The poem, “Life Shut Down” begins:
Loneliness is wrapped around New York City
sheltering in place
your muscles are tight
you’re grinding your teeth.
The gyms, libraries, churches, businesses are all closed. Meetings are banned, appointments canceled indefinitely. ‘Healing love has shut down,’ she writes. Kleinbub outlines her coping strategy:
I seek comfort in tulip petals and dandelions—
photographing the Earth’s rebirth
tending to the garden.
Five weeks since life has shut down.
Ironically, it’s spring, the season of rebirth, resurrection. In “Garden Store Chaos” the worst has begun to happen.
It started with a quiet click
of a closing door
The days the lights in bars and
restaurants went dark
People we knew began getting sick
People we knew were dying
We stayed home and
counted the caskets on TV
At the Northside Bakery, in “Food for Thought,” a teenager begins to cough and the narrator, lined up outside, begins to worry. ‘Is it worth dying for a / good loaf of bread?’ In poems titled “Confined,” “Out of Work,” “The World Is on Lockdown,” “Bound,” and others Kleinbub details the disorientation, the sense of isolation. ‘In “Confined,” you sense the desperation in the line, ‘my flesh needs your touch,’ which is echoed in the subsequent poem, “Get Out of the House”: ‘Human touch is now a memory / interactions limited.’ Zoom meetings, virtual birthday parties – they just don’t provide that visceral sort of connection.
And then comes “George Floyd.” On the last Monday in May the world watches the brutal murder of Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, and the nation explodes in fury. In the poem she writes:
INJUSTICE!
George Floyd
an unarmed black man is killed
by a white policeman.
Indeed, in poem after poem, Kleinbub chronicles the civil unrest, the chaos: “Riots” (‘Trump’s hate and racism has festered – / it oozes through MAGA minds.’), “Seeking Justice,” “Closed,” “Politics of Quarantine” (‘Our president tries to stop the mail / to prevent voters’ tallies.’), “The President’s a Roadblock,” “Almost Time to Harvest,” and culminating in “January 6, 2021”:
Refusing to accept he lost the election
the president calls to arms his supporters:
evangelical Christians, white supremacists,
the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers
The poem, which ends part one of the collection (“Lockdown”), concludes with the forlorn question: ‘truth and justice, / where did it go?’
The predominant theme of the first part is trying to make sense out of the chaos, how to maintain a normal rhythm, if it’s even possible. “What Day Is It?” occurs right around Independence Day, but it’s hard to say what the actual date is, under the lockdown circumstances. Is it the second of July? The third? Three of Kleinbub’s poems, “Get Out of the House,” “Seeking Justice,” and “Almost Time for Harvest,” are Abecedarians, an ancient poetic form guided by alphabetical order. It’s clear that this is precisely her agenda, going from A to Z, to come to some sense of order.
Part 2, “Sick with Covid”, starts with Kleinbub getting the virus, which, she tells us in her Notes, happened in February, 2021, just as the vaccines were just starting to be rolled out. “This Is Not Playtime” and “Long Distance Health Care” spell out the new conditions under which we lived, their life-and-death terms. She details her symptoms, the loss of taste and smell, the fever and fatigue, the aches.
But while debilitating, Kleinbub’s case is not as severe as her friend’s. In “Fairy Tale Princess,” in which she compares her isolation to Rapunzel, she notes: ‘COVID crisis sends my friend to the hospital / A phone call in distress.’ While she copes with her own lethargy in “Fog of Fatigue,” ‘In oxygenated hospital rooms / my friend struggles on steroids to breathe.’ In “Fahrenheit Open Mic Sunday,” referring to a reading series that Kleinbub curates, she drives the comparison home, writing about herself in the third-person:
She’s still in a slow stupor
lacking smell always
lacking taste some of the time
She’s healing slowly
as she prays for her hospitalized friend.
In “Aftermath,” weeks after succumbing to the virus, Kleinbub chronicles:
Confined to home during illness
I have to tell myself it’s a good day
but I’m still worried about you in the hospital
hooked up to oxygen and intravenous tubes
Her friend finally gets out of the hospital, as Kleinbub records in “Out After Infection,” but the recovery process is ongoing for both victims. The poem, “Constellations Appear to Dance,” from which the book takes its title, heralds the end of the illness. An image of dancing constellations in the night sky is a hopeful sign. The poem ends on a more positive reflection:
I’ll bathe in warm lavender
crawl in bed beside you
wrap my body around you
our universe
Appear to Dance, as the last handful of poems in the collection illustrate, contains a caution embedded in the experience, that momentary lack of vigil, her defenses down however briefly – the masking, the social-distancing, the handwashing – possibly resulting in the infection. She begins the final poem, “COVID Virus,” ‘Children, what will you / observe, what will you remember?’ The poem ends:
Understand, I don’t have the answers but I’ll
share all my knowledge for a cure.
Oct 7 2024
London Grip Poetry Review – Linda Kleinbub
Poetry review – APPEAR TO DANCE: Charles Rammelkamp finds Linda Kleinbub’s poetic diary to be a powerful reminder of life amid the COVID pandemic
Reminiscent of Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, which chronicled the devastation of the bubonic plague in London, 1664-1665, Linda Kleinbub’s new collection is likewise a diary of a year of havoc, the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020-2021 – the illness, the death, the lockdown, the isolation – but set in New York City instead of London. In her Notes at the beginning of Appear to Dance Kleinbub informs us that she wrote every day in an attempt to make sense of the pandemic experience, to find some kind of order in the chaos.
A New Yorker, Kleinbub endured the epicenter of the plague in the United States, which first tore through New York City beginning in March of 2020, before much of the rest of the country was affected. Kleinbub’s journal starts in the spring. The poem, “Life Shut Down” begins:
Loneliness is wrapped around New York City sheltering in place your muscles are tight you’re grinding your teeth.The gyms, libraries, churches, businesses are all closed. Meetings are banned, appointments canceled indefinitely. ‘Healing love has shut down,’ she writes. Kleinbub outlines her coping strategy:
I seek comfort in tulip petals and dandelions— photographing the Earth’s rebirth tending to the garden. Five weeks since life has shut down.Ironically, it’s spring, the season of rebirth, resurrection. In “Garden Store Chaos” the worst has begun to happen.
It started with a quiet click of a closing door The days the lights in bars and restaurants went dark People we knew began getting sick People we knew were dying We stayed home and counted the caskets on TVAt the Northside Bakery, in “Food for Thought,” a teenager begins to cough and the narrator, lined up outside, begins to worry. ‘Is it worth dying for a / good loaf of bread?’ In poems titled “Confined,” “Out of Work,” “The World Is on Lockdown,” “Bound,” and others Kleinbub details the disorientation, the sense of isolation. ‘In “Confined,” you sense the desperation in the line, ‘my flesh needs your touch,’ which is echoed in the subsequent poem, “Get Out of the House”: ‘Human touch is now a memory / interactions limited.’ Zoom meetings, virtual birthday parties – they just don’t provide that visceral sort of connection.
And then comes “George Floyd.” On the last Monday in May the world watches the brutal murder of Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, and the nation explodes in fury. In the poem she writes:
INJUSTICE! George Floyd an unarmed black man is killed by a white policeman.Indeed, in poem after poem, Kleinbub chronicles the civil unrest, the chaos: “Riots” (‘Trump’s hate and racism has festered – / it oozes through MAGA minds.’), “Seeking Justice,” “Closed,” “Politics of Quarantine” (‘Our president tries to stop the mail / to prevent voters’ tallies.’), “The President’s a Roadblock,” “Almost Time to Harvest,” and culminating in “January 6, 2021”:
Refusing to accept he lost the election the president calls to arms his supporters: evangelical Christians, white supremacists, the Proud Boys and the Oath KeepersThe poem, which ends part one of the collection (“Lockdown”), concludes with the forlorn question: ‘truth and justice, / where did it go?’
The predominant theme of the first part is trying to make sense out of the chaos, how to maintain a normal rhythm, if it’s even possible. “What Day Is It?” occurs right around Independence Day, but it’s hard to say what the actual date is, under the lockdown circumstances. Is it the second of July? The third? Three of Kleinbub’s poems, “Get Out of the House,” “Seeking Justice,” and “Almost Time for Harvest,” are Abecedarians, an ancient poetic form guided by alphabetical order. It’s clear that this is precisely her agenda, going from A to Z, to come to some sense of order.
Part 2, “Sick with Covid”, starts with Kleinbub getting the virus, which, she tells us in her Notes, happened in February, 2021, just as the vaccines were just starting to be rolled out. “This Is Not Playtime” and “Long Distance Health Care” spell out the new conditions under which we lived, their life-and-death terms. She details her symptoms, the loss of taste and smell, the fever and fatigue, the aches.
But while debilitating, Kleinbub’s case is not as severe as her friend’s. In “Fairy Tale Princess,” in which she compares her isolation to Rapunzel, she notes: ‘COVID crisis sends my friend to the hospital / A phone call in distress.’ While she copes with her own lethargy in “Fog of Fatigue,” ‘In oxygenated hospital rooms / my friend struggles on steroids to breathe.’ In “Fahrenheit Open Mic Sunday,” referring to a reading series that Kleinbub curates, she drives the comparison home, writing about herself in the third-person:
She’s still in a slow stupor lacking smell always lacking taste some of the time She’s healing slowly as she prays for her hospitalized friend.In “Aftermath,” weeks after succumbing to the virus, Kleinbub chronicles:
Confined to home during illness I have to tell myself it’s a good day but I’m still worried about you in the hospital hooked up to oxygen and intravenous tubesHer friend finally gets out of the hospital, as Kleinbub records in “Out After Infection,” but the recovery process is ongoing for both victims. The poem, “Constellations Appear to Dance,” from which the book takes its title, heralds the end of the illness. An image of dancing constellations in the night sky is a hopeful sign. The poem ends on a more positive reflection:
I’ll bathe in warm lavender crawl in bed beside you wrap my body around you our universeAppear to Dance, as the last handful of poems in the collection illustrate, contains a caution embedded in the experience, that momentary lack of vigil, her defenses down however briefly – the masking, the social-distancing, the handwashing – possibly resulting in the infection. She begins the final poem, “COVID Virus,” ‘Children, what will you / observe, what will you remember?’ The poem ends:
Understand, I don’t have the answers but I’ll share all my knowledge for a cure.