Social Distancing

"Bracero(s) & The Ice Car, a Mexican Lynching" by Anthony Cody (2019)

The visual artist responsible for arranging Herrera’s “Social Distancing,” Anthony Cody’s work often reflects his interest in altering the ways poems take up physical space on the page. Both in content and form, “Bracero(s) & The Ice Car” is a poem that illustrates Cody’s many uses of language. Like “Social Distancing,” “Bracero(s)” offers multiple ways of reading the text and spaces between different lines and phrases.

"I Have This Way of Being" by Jamaal May (2016)

Contemporary poet Jamaal May’s “I Have This Way of Being” is an interesting text to compare with “Social Distancing.” Although May’s poem is more formally structured in couplets that follow a somewhat rhythmic structure, it is also a poem that balances the abstract and the concrete. Additionally, the short line structure and shifts in language lead to a similar kind of movement as is present in Herrera’s “Social Distancing.”

"Poem by Poem" by Juan Felipe Herrera (2015)

A more explicitly political poem from Herrera’s broad repertoire, “Poem by Poem” is written in response to a shooting in 2015, when white supremacist Dylan Roof killed nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina.