Infodemic

by Carol Guess

In a pandemic where information is withheld, warped, and weaponized, Carol Guess’s biting, funny, musical poems and prose serve as an antidote to our cultural tendency to sugar coat, our collective amnesia, our “paradigm shift fatigue.” Infodemic digs through the dark absurdities of our shared trauma–the stunted intimacies of life through masks and Twitter and Zoom–alongside “the small messes of the heart.” In the wake of illness, divorce, heartbreak and loss, when loneliness becomes a room to live in, and the barrier between life and death feels like a trap door, Guess finds communion in her queer family, in “birds live tweeting sky” and racoons watching from the pines, in ghosts crowding her kitchen, smelling of engine oil and freshly baked bread, asking: “What does it mean to be close to another person?” With a directness almost disconcerting in its sharp ring of truth, these poems will make you sit up and listen to a speaker transformed: “The fox in my chest spins / so I don’t need a heart: / not heartless / but furred and fired up.”

–Rochelle Hurt, author of The J Girls: A Reality Show

I left my blue heart in the cat claws of this collection. This speaker who asks all the right questions: “My dude / why are you still a jerk didn’t tragedy change you?” Carol Guess’s Infodemic will make you laugh in public. It will hold you tenderly through haunted scenes of Bachelorette fantasy suites and neighborhoods that smell “like white collar crime.” I’ve never read a collection that stares so boldly at pandemic life, queer divorce, ghosts of this moment. This little fox who doesn’t bank online. Even in the face of such trauma and frustration, she jokes, “Did you know that if you marry someone and bring them coffee every morning and commit to having sex with only one person, you will both die?” Part of what distinguishes Guess is how she plays—her furiously unwavering way of writing dragons to tear off the prison gates.

–Taneum Bambrick, author of Intimacies, Received

Genres: Poetry

98 pages, Paperback

Published July 1, 2024

Reviews

[Julene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Infodemic Carol Guess's latest poetry book speaks to our times. According to the World Health Organization, "An infodemic is too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak. It causes confusion and risk-taking behaviours that can harm health. It also leads to mistrust in health authorities and undermines the public health response. An infodemic can intensify or lengthen outbreaks when people are unsure about what they need to do to protect their health and the health of people around them. With growing digitization – an expansion of social media and internet use – information can spread more rapidly. This can help to more quickly fill information voids but can also amplify harmful messages."

What better than poetry to view our changed world. The swirl we live in daily with the pandemic still raging and new diseases likely to follow. In the opening poem set before the book starts, 1978, she writes "...I danced // the Bus Stop with the all-skate line. / I believed I would survive." Followed by poems titled, "The Year I Stayed Inside," "Unexpected Side Effect of the Second Dose of the Moderna Vaccine," "Thank You to the Needle for Not Wasting My Time," and "There is No Goddamn Chip in the Vaccine." This last poem opens with the line, "But if there was, maybe you'd like it."

An assortment of prose poems are included, some longer that cover the intricacies of living life during a pandemic: getting rear-ended, watching too much television, vacuuming and discovering classified documents, hiking as women under siege.... This book will make you laugh, fear, and hope. One central long poem is titled, "What is a Divorce Poem?," which is filled with brilliant quips on both divorce but especially on a poem, because Carol is not only a brilliant writer, but a teacher. One line form this three page poem, "A divorce trusts that you will bring your own life experiences to the / divorce and therefore every reading of a divorce is different."

One of my favorite poetry books that walks us through this difficult time we've survived.

[Erica Naone · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this so much and I know I will read it again.

There were a lot of poems with a sort of twist and bite that I appreciated. See, for example, “The Day My Best Friend Had a Pregnancy Scare,” and “Swerve.” Both work because of a sort of complete honesty that it is hard to get to even privately. Being there in a poem creates something that feels so real. And it’s sort of dark because we don’t usually say that stuff out loud, but then it feels so revealing to see it written there.

I loved the structure of the book. Poems to me seemed grouped by themes, or perhaps by chronology or phases of the pandemic, resulting in themes. Style shifts came along with these groupings. For example, the final section, which was to me about grief and ghosts, included a lot of poems that read like surrealist stories. These style shifts contributed to the feeling of moving through time or the way life shifts with events.

The section that starts with “The Devil Found Me” may have been my favorite. Its subject matter started out being about attack (with a sexual subtext) from what seem like strangers at first. Then more and more it concerns itself with the danger and pain in relationships with lovers. The final poem of the section, “What is a -divorce- poem?” Is a masterpiece of how a poem can overlay two subjects. It is amazing how the first poem of the section claims “I know who to run from” and the final poem ends with “you can stay as long as you want.” Especially in the context of divorce, that last line has so many interpretations.

I am still figuring out how best to review poetry collections but I guess the main point here is that I loved the style of this. I loved the author’s voice, which feels sly and honest and then vulnerable. I love the themes that emerge, like what does it mean that we just go past tents in cities all the time and the city doesn’t seem to care and also… we don’t seem to really care, do we? I love that this collection grapples with and acknowledges this.

I’m figuring out that my favorite collections of poems grab me and keep me reading (just one more, just one more), but then also have a depth to them and a promise of discovery that makes me sure I want to read them again. This is certainly one of those.

Oh and how could I not have mentioned “CDC Guidelines for Midafternoon”? It’s referred to in the blurbs for a reason. It has that humorous bite but also a breath of transcendence, and it oddly made me feel nostalgic for a time during the pandemic that was generally quite miserable. Again, there are so many good poems in this book.

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfection! I’ll read this again and again. A perfect journey though pandemic thinking and wondering from the most painful to hilariously absurd to heartfelt hope. Full of humor, anger, despair, and complex observations I loved it!