A01=M. Cynthia Cheung
asteroid craters
Author_M. Cynthia Cheung
Category=DC
Category=DCC
Category=DCF
Category=DS
Charles Darwin
classical Chinese
COVID-19
doctor
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
free verse
ghazal
Lascaux caves
memory
motherhood
natural history
pandemic
physician
tar pits
Ukraine
Viking ruins
war crimes
Product details
- ISBN 9781946724984
- Weight: 141g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 15 Nov 2025
- Publisher: Acre Books
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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A remarkable debut collection that chronicles the experience of anxiety and anguish in the face of COVID-19.
As a front-line physician, M. Cynthia Cheung started writing poetry during the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her remarkable debut collection, Common Disaster, chronicles these experiences. Confronting not just the coronavirus but also war crimes and the death of loved ones, Cheung shows us that the pandemic is only one of many disasters we hold in common. In poems that look to both the past and future, she takes a stand against the extinction of self and memory, challenging the violence of erasure.
The period covered by the book is geologic and vast. It examines present-day evidence of ancient human activity and natural history, including the Lascaux caves, asteroid craters, tar pits, and Viking ruins. The poems include ghazals, thoughtful free verse, and work that takes up the page in reframing classical Chinese oracular texts to situate the pain of a doctor in crisis.
As a physician-poet, Cheung asks us to see beyond the every day to the devastating truths about the human condition.
As a front-line physician, M. Cynthia Cheung started writing poetry during the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her remarkable debut collection, Common Disaster, chronicles these experiences. Confronting not just the coronavirus but also war crimes and the death of loved ones, Cheung shows us that the pandemic is only one of many disasters we hold in common. In poems that look to both the past and future, she takes a stand against the extinction of self and memory, challenging the violence of erasure.
The period covered by the book is geologic and vast. It examines present-day evidence of ancient human activity and natural history, including the Lascaux caves, asteroid craters, tar pits, and Viking ruins. The poems include ghazals, thoughtful free verse, and work that takes up the page in reframing classical Chinese oracular texts to situate the pain of a doctor in crisis.
As a physician-poet, Cheung asks us to see beyond the every day to the devastating truths about the human condition.
M. Cynthia Cheung is an American poet whose work has appeared in AGNI, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, swamp pink, and elsewhere, and she is the recipient of the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. She practices internal medicine in Houston, Texas.
