A Different Distance: A Renga

In the spring of 2020, Hacker (A Stranger’s Mirror) and Naïr began exchanging stanzas that took the shape of a renga, the Japanese poetic form that weaves multiple authors in dialogue. These stanzas, which alternate between the two poets and between red and black font color, are links in a poetic chain that grew as the lockdown and pandemic dragged on. The poets document their days and health, attempt to glean meaning from "this fearsome time," and reveal how time in lockdown paradoxically constricts and expands. A trip from one part of Paris to another becomes impossible: "Where the métro took someone home’s a foreign country now," Hacker observes. Meanwhile, Naïr marvels at joining a virtual party from the suburbs of Paris while others attend "from Bangalore, Delhi, Dhaka, Calcutta…. The Sundarbans fill our maskless minds, and laughter, our ears." Granted, some may find that the subject matter of "pandemic intimacies: Whats-App, FaceTime, telephone" to be exhausted, but the two authors offer both a useful reconceptualization of distance and an ode to friendship. Hacker and Naïr bring wisdom and empathy to a challenging historical moment in these rich and thoughtful pages. (Dec.)