Suspended time: pandemic and contemporary poetry

Abstract

The relationship between time and poetry drives this text, to analyze specifically how the Covid-19 pandemic manifests as a “suspended time” and how this reverberates in contemporary poetry. For this purpose, we selected some fragments of Alice Sant’Anna’s thesis (2020), Dobra, in a reading that highlights these pandemic echoes. Based on notions of poetry, time, and the pandemic discussed by philosophers such as Jean-Luc Nancy (2005) and Giorgio Agamben (2016; 2020), we verify how contemporary poetry enhances the dialogues between literature and society. Through the experience of social isolation, meanings about the state of exception, blocked time, and poetry are constructed. Also, to deepen the discussion in the Brazilian context, we return to the notes of Eurídice Figueiredo (2022). From our reading, we can observe how the issues of social isolation, pandemic, fear, contamination, disease, life, death, and time are expressed in Alice Sant’Anna’s poetry.

Keywords:
Alice Sant’Anna; state of exception; pandemic; contemporary poetry