Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Common Disaster: Poems

Common Disaster: Poems

Cheung, M. Cynthia

Paperback

General Poetry

Publisher Price: $17.00

ISBN10: 194672498X
ISBN13: 9781946724984
Publisher: Acre Books
Published: Nov 15 2025
Pages: 80
Weight: 0.15
Height: 0.25 Width: 5.92 Depth: 8.83
Language: English
A remarkable debut collection that chronicles the experience of anxiety and anguish in the face of COVID-19.

As a front-line physician, M. Cynthia Cheung started writing poetry during the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her remarkable debut collection, Common Disaster, chronicles these experiences. Confronting not just the coronavirus but also war crimes and the death of loved ones, Cheung shows us that the pandemic is only one of many disasters we hold in common. In poems that look to both the past and future, she takes a stand against the extinction of self and memory, challenging the violence of erasure.

The period covered by the book is geologic and vast. It examines present-day evidence of ancient human activity and natural history, including the Lascaux caves, asteroid craters, tar pits, and Viking ruins. The poems include ghazals, thoughtful free verse, and work that takes up the page in reframing classical Chinese oracular texts to situate the pain of a doctor in crisis.

As a physician-poet, Cheung asks us to see beyond the every day to the devastating truths about the human condition.

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