Common Disaster: Poems

Common Disaster: Poems - Paperback

$18.36
Sale price  $18.36 Regular price 
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Common Disaster: Poems

Common Disaster: Poems - Paperback

by M. Cynthia Cheung
$18.36
Sale price  $18.36 Regular price 

Book Overview

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.
ISBN9781946724984
Author M. Cynthia Cheung
PublisherAcre Books
GenreLiterature
FormatPaperback
PublishedNovember 2025
LanguageENG- English
Pages80
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

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About M. Cynthia Cheung

M. Cynthia Cheung is an American poet whose work has appeared in AGNI, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, swamp pink, and elsewhere

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