Slices of Life During the COVID-19 Pandemic with Jenny Carey and Gianna Russo’s All I See Is Your Glinting: 90 Days in the Pandemic
By Jay Aja
Saw Palm contributor Gianna Russo offers a quiet snapshot of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic with her new poetry collection, All I See Is Your Glinting: 90 Days in the Pandemic published in 2022. Spanning the last three months of 2020 up to January 1, 2021, these poems, interlaid with the beautifully poignant photography of Jenny Carey, portray the varying cadences of living introduced to all of us in that year, through Russo's daily meditations.
As we travel over this span of time, from the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to Russo’s home in Tampa, Florida, she reflects that the happiness reserved for the holiday season was often overshadowed by the fears and frustrations born of the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election yet, remarkably, still interspersed throughout by small moments of beauty. More than simply Russo’s recounting of the tensions and unexpected sparks of joy experienced during the quotidian of the pandemic, this collection documents the state of living most of us found ourselves existing within during a time of upheaval, that still continues to drive uncertainty into our present. Russo gives vent to these conflicting feelings: “. . . My faith / abides on / a wintery / porch, joy / steeped with / melancholy, next / year trembling / under the / tree.”
In this way, Carey and Russo’s combined artistry in this collection collaborate to provide a catharsis to our strained nerves. The pages are structured to alternate concise flashes of poems emphasizing the heightened emotions of chronological days, alongside Carey’s photographs offering moments of reprieve — still images of peace and calm often depicting scenes of wholesome nature. Each poem is a distilled account of a moment or scene couched in less than 10 lines with a few words comprising each line. Russo explains her system as involving setting a word limit equal to the sum of the numerical month and day on which she was writing. Restricting the wording to a minimalist style guaranteed a minute distillation of the day to be extracted, over the course of which we see the variegated tones of Russo’s daily life in the pandemic: “Our year / of misery. / Yet, my / friend’s lambent / porch light / welcomes me. / My sisters’ / laughter conjures / mine, confetti-like / . . . Like chrysanthemum / petals, gratitude / unfurls.”
Carey’s images meanwhile act as a counterbalance, providing thought-provoking backdrops to Russo’s words, at times suggesting additional commentary: Over the course of pages 50, 52, and 54, different time captures of the broken surface of water fracturing into increasingly complex fractals convey a frenzied state of unsolved geometric questions, like mathematical enigmas, moving us past the boundary of control into a blur of chaos. On page 56, a lone orb caught like a deflated balloon or a ghost within dusk-shaded tree branches presents the cold eye of the Moon, our nearest neighbor yet a detached spectator, aloof and removed. Juxtaposed with these images, Russo observes: “. . . face. We / won’t change / our ways, / despite everything, / good sense / sapped by / desire. I / reproach myself / for comings-and-goings, / turning from / flood-tides of / the dead: / 330,000 faces / float across /our screens . . .”
However, recurrent in these poems and photos are themes of survival and discovering candle-flame-flickers of joy when you least expect it, like gentle bursts of guiding light. The enduring message of this collection seems to be that even though fear and worry have entered our homes by dint of the pandemic, like unwanted guests who overstay their welcome, we are still surviving. And there is still peace and happiness and grace and rest to be found in those sparkling moments of hope between the trepidation.
Russo reminisces upon an instance of seeing a loved one demonstrate this tenacity: “. . . Covid, your / captor’s, finally / vanquished. I / look old, / lost my / hair. Then / you undo / the lock— / all I see is / you resurrected. / Your glinting / brilliant behind / your mask.”
As we travel over this span of time, from the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to Russo’s home in Tampa, Florida, she reflects that the happiness reserved for the holiday season was often overshadowed by the fears and frustrations born of the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election yet, remarkably, still interspersed throughout by small moments of beauty. More than simply Russo’s recounting of the tensions and unexpected sparks of joy experienced during the quotidian of the pandemic, this collection documents the state of living most of us found ourselves existing within during a time of upheaval, that still continues to drive uncertainty into our present. Russo gives vent to these conflicting feelings: “. . . My faith / abides on / a wintery / porch, joy / steeped with / melancholy, next / year trembling / under the / tree.”
In this way, Carey and Russo’s combined artistry in this collection collaborate to provide a catharsis to our strained nerves. The pages are structured to alternate concise flashes of poems emphasizing the heightened emotions of chronological days, alongside Carey’s photographs offering moments of reprieve — still images of peace and calm often depicting scenes of wholesome nature. Each poem is a distilled account of a moment or scene couched in less than 10 lines with a few words comprising each line. Russo explains her system as involving setting a word limit equal to the sum of the numerical month and day on which she was writing. Restricting the wording to a minimalist style guaranteed a minute distillation of the day to be extracted, over the course of which we see the variegated tones of Russo’s daily life in the pandemic: “Our year / of misery. / Yet, my / friend’s lambent / porch light / welcomes me. / My sisters’ / laughter conjures / mine, confetti-like / . . . Like chrysanthemum / petals, gratitude / unfurls.”
Carey’s images meanwhile act as a counterbalance, providing thought-provoking backdrops to Russo’s words, at times suggesting additional commentary: Over the course of pages 50, 52, and 54, different time captures of the broken surface of water fracturing into increasingly complex fractals convey a frenzied state of unsolved geometric questions, like mathematical enigmas, moving us past the boundary of control into a blur of chaos. On page 56, a lone orb caught like a deflated balloon or a ghost within dusk-shaded tree branches presents the cold eye of the Moon, our nearest neighbor yet a detached spectator, aloof and removed. Juxtaposed with these images, Russo observes: “. . . face. We / won’t change / our ways, / despite everything, / good sense / sapped by / desire. I / reproach myself / for comings-and-goings, / turning from / flood-tides of / the dead: / 330,000 faces / float across /our screens . . .”
However, recurrent in these poems and photos are themes of survival and discovering candle-flame-flickers of joy when you least expect it, like gentle bursts of guiding light. The enduring message of this collection seems to be that even though fear and worry have entered our homes by dint of the pandemic, like unwanted guests who overstay their welcome, we are still surviving. And there is still peace and happiness and grace and rest to be found in those sparkling moments of hope between the trepidation.
Russo reminisces upon an instance of seeing a loved one demonstrate this tenacity: “. . . Covid, your / captor’s, finally / vanquished. I / look old, / lost my / hair. Then / you undo / the lock— / all I see is / you resurrected. / Your glinting / brilliant behind / your mask.”
Currently an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Saint Leo University, Tampa, Florida native, Gianna Russo has published several other works of poetry including poetry collections One House Down (2019) and Moonflower (2011); and chapbooks The Companion of Joy (2014), In Late Day Sun: Florida Plant Life Studies (2008), and Blue Slumber (2006). She has also been an editor for the anthologies Chasing Light, Sandhill Review (2014 - 2020), and Yellowjacket Press chapbooks (2015-2019). You can find out more about Gianna Russo at her website, https://russo15.wordpress.com.
Tampa photographer Jenny Carey is founder and coordinator of the organization, Creative Exchange, a collective for professional artists which seeks to advocate for artist interests within the community. She has had several selected juried and invitational group exhibitions with many initiatives including the Davis Orton Gallery (2021), Art Ascent Magazine (2021), Rhode Island Center for Photographic Art (2021), and others. You can view Jenny Carey’s work at https://www.jennycarey.com/about-2.
Tampa photographer Jenny Carey is founder and coordinator of the organization, Creative Exchange, a collective for professional artists which seeks to advocate for artist interests within the community. She has had several selected juried and invitational group exhibitions with many initiatives including the Davis Orton Gallery (2021), Art Ascent Magazine (2021), Rhode Island Center for Photographic Art (2021), and others. You can view Jenny Carey’s work at https://www.jennycarey.com/about-2.
