Images of the health emergency in contemporary poetry

Pictures portraying the health emergency around the world, such as those of the potter’s field in Hart Island, of the field hospitals in New York or of the column of military trucks transporting the coffins of COVID-19 victims in Bergamo, had worldwide resonance. This research investigates their metaphorical value in two recent poems: Plaguey Hill by Paul Muldoon and Requiem per una casa di riposo lombarda (Requiem for a Lombard Rest Home) by Fabio Pusterla. The preliminary aim is a complete analysis of the two poems. Thereafter, I will focus on the metaphorical function of the aforementioned pictures. In Muldoon, they convey a new sense of community, and also work on a meta literary level, deconstructing older representations. Pusterla recurs to the literary device of estrangement to put forward a social criticism. Texts that are very different from each other turn the emergency we are facing today into metaphors for the human condition. Metaphors of illness (and illness as metaphor) can be toxic. In poetry, however, they convey complex messages that we may still need to hear