Quarantine / Contagion

Narrated by a man dying of the plague, "Quarantine" is a book-length poem that explores sexuality and subjectivity as well as the viability of narrative itself. Lying in a field beside his dead wife and son, the narrator describes the events leading up to his and his family's death. "Quarantine" is ostensibly set outside London in 1665, during the bubonic plague, but the motives of the narrator eventually cast doubt onto his story, as does the fact that plague victims often become delirious and may lapse into a coma before death. His story accumulates via accretion and contradiction, complicating his attempts truthfully to describe his life. To counter-act the narrator's hold on the story, ten passages, written in the third-person, are interspersed throughout "Quarantine", providing an objective vantage point. After the narrator finishes his story, "Quarantine" undoes itself in "Contagion", which mirrors 'distortedly, and in reverse' the narrative.