A few months ago I saw on Instagram the the Writer, Actor, Producer and Artist Daniel Damiano had started writing poetry during the time when our area was experiencing shutdowns and tragedy during the height of the current health crisis. I've written about Daniel in these pages before, and he is a marvelous writer and performer whose work I always enjoy. When I started to read the posts of his poems on Instagram I was very moved by them. Sometimes very funny and often deeply touching, they told a day to day story of how he was experiencing life in New York City and the boroughs during some of the darkest days we have collectively known.
Titled "104 Days of the Pandemic," the poem cycle he wrote covered the time between March 19th and June 30th, with a poem written every day that reflected his thoughts, his emotions and his experiences during that time. He sent me a copy of the entire cycle a little over a month ago and I waited until I had time to sit and read them all together because I wanted to experience them as a whole.
The work is lovely and very powerful, and it speaks of a collective experience and truth that though he makes very personal can be a reflection for us all in our own individual experiences. Reading his words is in many ways healing and cathartic, a way of recognizing the trauma that we have all sustained while also helping us to focus on our shared and individual humanity.
As a book of poems it is very powerful when read all together, but the poems in the cycle also work individually. Each one has its own perspective, and even in the more humorous or lighter passages there is a yearning for the time when our lives didn't know the devastation that we have experienced in these past months of this year.
I have been speaking with a friend who has said that he feels that during this time what has been missing is the encouragement to collectively and individually grieve over what we have lost. For some the losses have been very deeply personal - loved ones, family members, friends, their livelihoods, their businesses, their way of life - but whatever the personal cost of this collective devastation, we have all lost something of our innocence and the way we experienced our lives. I realize this most acutely when I see someone I care about who I haven't seen in a while and we must stand apart with our faces covered and not share a hug as we would have before.
It's part of the human experience to desire closeness and affection and warmth of human touch, and it's painful at times to experience that separation from those who we love. "104 Days Of The Pandemic" gives us a place to start our collective grieving process, and by sharing his writer's voice, Daniel Damiano has given us an opening to begin to share our own.
Blessings,
Jannie Susan
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