THE PANDEMIC OF RACISM IN SELECTED CONTEMPORARY POEMS

Out of the lockdown restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic emerged contemporary American poetry through social media, online publishing, and print to portray a global health crisis, document the pain of social and physical distance, and reassert common humanness. It came to regenerate human empathy and compassion and stir in people the struggles of homelessness, exile, poverty, or at-home self-isolation. However, contemporary pandemic poetry, as it is called, transcended the therapeutic stand as a mere representation of emotional distress, tears behind the masks, or a source to remedy the physical harm and reestablish hope in humanity that the pandemic fractured. Through examining selected pandemic poems written by contemporary Black American poets, this paper argues that their poetry is neither a new version of stereotyped or clichéd themes about minorities in America, nor a poetic outlet during a health crisis. Instead, the paper is inclined to exhibit that poetry of minorities written during COVID-19 time is a manifesto of race-based violence that exposes an ongoing pandemic of structural racism. The paper also argues that pandemic poetry stands as a platform and praxis to reveal health antiracism discourse vs. established cultural and racialized assumptions of the different ‘other ’that are deeply rooted in the nonminority mentality.