The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Arts 4 — Wednesday, February 23, 2022 POETRY HAS THE ability to give us strength in our darkest times and reflect our joy in our happiest moments. For evidence, just look at the outpouring of gratitude for Amanda Gorman — Presi- dent Biden’s inaugural poet — and the virality of her poem “The Hill We Climb.” The line “For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it,” seemed to encom- pass both the despair and the hope so many Americans were feeling on that day, just two weeks after armed rioters stormed the capitol. That is the power of poetry. So if you feel like you’re living through an apocalypse — the seemingly never-ending COVID-19 pandemic, polit- ical turmoil, deep divides in American society, threat of war, climate change, police brutality, a collective mental health crisis or whatever other calamity you can think of — here’s some poetry to help carry you through. “Dearly” by Margaret Atwood Margaret Atwood is perhaps best known for her 1985 novel “The Hand- maid’s Tale,” a searing criticism of Western rape culture and restrictions on reproductive freedom. She turns that same keen eye to her poetry — though in the several decades that have passed, it has been molded, not dulled, by age’s wis- dom. Now 82, Atwood speaks to today’s crises in her most recent poetry collec- tion, “Dearly,” with both her character- istic wit and anger and a sort of gentle, pleading hope. Her poetry encapsulates what this era is and could become: the ongoing fight for women’s rights, the looming climate catastrophe, the grief of losing a loved one and our current politi- cal situation. But despite its heavy topics, her poetry does not produce a helpless feeling; instead, it makes you want to fight even more. “What the Living Do” by Marie Howe “What the Living Do” tells the frag- mented story of youth, how our child- hoods shape us into who we are and how we come to learn what living is all about. Written for her brother, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1989, “What the Living Do” is imbued with a sense of wonder for life — all of its pain and joy and in-betweens. It does not attempt to make everything rosy; it knows how difficult this all is, how tiring it can be to keep going day after day with the small frustrations and regrets piling up. But it also shines light onto the under- side, the part that we often let collect dust as we alternate between slogging away and sleeping: the heartwrenching beauty of this short, short time we have together. Howe’s poetry speaks best for itself: “We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. / We want / whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then / more of it. / But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the / window glass, / say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so / deep / for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m / speech- less: / I am living. I remember you.” “Unearth [The Flowers]” by Thea Matthews “Unearth [The Flowers]” is a book for today’s moment of collective outrage and action. Matthews, a Black Indigenous Mexican poet, does not shy away from the grief and anger born from colonization, militarism and patriarchy. This is not an easy read — the violence she describes left a sickening feeling in my stomach. But the poems are, at their roots, vignettes of survival and resilience. How does one heal when the injuring is ongoing? How does one reclaim their body, their life? With each poem named after a flower, Matthews shows how people can bloom even through the darkest moments, how we will always plant our roots and reach towards the sun: “My roots now / strengthened my bones in formation / I emerge slowly uprising in the night. I rise / in the glimmer of untamable waters / I live.” Content warning: Character death, vio- lence, spoilers for “The Walking Dead” THE GLOBAL PHENOMENON AMC television series “The Walking Dead” (Robert Kirkman) was once one of the most highly rated television series on air. “The Walking Dead” follows zom- bie apocalypse survivors Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln, “Penguin Bloom”), Maggie Greene (Lauren Cohan, “Invinci- ble”), Glenn Rhee (Steven Yeun, “Minari”) and an ensemble of a few dozen other characters as they clash with the brain- eating monsters and other survivors alike. Despite its acclaim, the show has some- what faded from the public eye in recent years. The adventures of protagonist Rick Grimes and company inevitably become dull as similar plot threads are repeated and a large portion of its original cast is killed off. Still, “The Walking Dead” remains a guilty pleasure of mine, regard- less of this decline in quality. Watching the world end for Rick Grimes, though often a complicated viewing relationship, has taught me how to prevent my own from ending. It all started one blistering summer afternoon some four or five years ago. In search of an escape and a quick thrill, my mother and I embarked on our first epi- sode of the acclaimed series, not know- ing what lay ahead of us. One episode was enough to have us wrapped around Grimes’s finger. A weekly routine became a nightly binge which became an insatia- ble obsession. We turned into Walkers ourselves, des- perate to feast on any Walking Dead con- tent we could get our hands on. Thanks to my mother’s Netflix subscription and the DVD section of my hometown’s pub- lic library, this hunger engulfed our sum- mer with an intensity akin to infatuation. Now, years later, I am both proud and embarrassed to say that I have watched 10 seasons of “The Walking Dead,” six sea- sons of the spinoff-prequel series, “Fear the Walking Dead” and (unfortunately) one season of “The Walking Dead: World Beyond.” As time went on, the magic of the first five or six seasons wore off, and watching “The Walking Dead” became increasing- ly daunting. I was continually force-fed unnecessary character deaths and con- trived storylines. There have been mar- ginal improvements in recent seasons, but too many aspects of the show are twisted unrecognizably from their origins; all but two original cast members have been killed off or left the show. “The Walking Dead” became the television embodiment of the Ship of Theseus. I was no longer watching the same show I fell in love with. As “The Walking Dead” has experi- enced somewhat of an apocalypse of its own, the COVID-19 pandemic raged on and created a world that was hauntingly similar to the desolate landscape depict- ed in the show. At its best, “The Walk- ing Dead” underlined the importance of found family and connection through adversity. Like Rick Grimes and his group of survivors, the only way I could weather this apocalypse was with the aid of fam- ily. My mother and I watched every single episode of the nearly 200-episode series together; we cried together, we screamed in terror together, we expressed our disappointment together. When a gut- punching cliffhanger left us in awe, we would revel in it. When a string of bad episodes left a sour taste we could always turn to each other to complain. Sharing the strenuous viewing experience made it more than bearable, even when “The Walking Dead” was at its worst. Watch- ing the show with my family during the pandemic was one of the only things that kept me sane; the escapism of a fictional apocalypse helped me cope with the real- ity of the global pandemic. Poetry to get you through the 2020s (and your 20s) Life lessons from Rick Grimes and his zombie apocalypse Our current apocalypse can’t be escaped in fiction THE APOCALYPSE OF the past two years was marked in my life, not just by the COVID-19 pandemic, but by the subjects of the books I read. I began reading more consistently during this time and found myself deep in a genre of existential stories that, whether or not I realized it at the time, added still more apocalyp- tic material to my darkening view of the world. After Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five,” the injustice of war was stamped into my brain on top of the rising COVID-19 cases. After Michael Cunningham’s “The Hours,” it was sickness and sadness and the fact that the human condition had begun to appear fractured. These and other novels left me unsettled by the passage of time for longer than I’d care to admit. I loved books like these, anxious and pessimistic as they made me. They altered my thinking. I felt changed by the authors’ use of language, which was powerful and mesmerizing. They were beautifully written, and they meant something. There was no question for me that they were worth my time. Yet as the pandemic dragged on in the real world, and the insurmount- able worldly problems and existential- ism piled up in the fiction I consumed, I began to long for an escape. I loved these books, but I needed a break from them. I wanted to be happy while reading, not because I liked the writing or because of Vonnegut’s dry, satirical humor, but because the sto- ries themselves were happy. I wanted a book that was cozy and exciting. I wanted fluff. I wanted romance. I wanted characters to root for who got what they wanted in clear-cut ways that I didn’t need to struggle to wrap my mind around. So, I set out to find a cute, fluffy romance novel. It couldn’t be too hard, I thought. Not a big romance reader myself, I turned to the BookTubers I watched, and they almost unani- mously recommended Talia Hibbert’s “Get a Life, Chloe Brown.” I checked it out from the library with perhaps unattainably high hopes. I liked “Chloe Brown” well enough, but it wasn’t everything I had dreamed it would be. I tried to be invested in the story, to care whether the characters ended up together, but the reality was that I wasn’t. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the story didn’t matter. I doubted it would deeply affect me in any way. I didn’t want this to be true. I certainly didn’t want to be someone who couldn’t enjoy romance novels because they weren’t heavy and dense and “serious.” I desperately wanted to care about Chloe and her love interest, Red. I tried to fend off my ambiva- lence to the story, but in the end, it was impossible. I looked for other romance novels, but none appealed to me much more. I followed this fail- ure with a string of thrillers — a genre I once loved — but the ones I chose, highly recommended as they were, felt generic; they felt like nothing spe- cial and I stopped reading most after a few chapters. I didn’t want to read another heavy book yet. I still wanted something fun, but for one reason or another, I didn’t enjoy the books I thought would fit this description. While deciding to write this for The Michigan Daily, I realized that I needed to think of a book that had saved me. A book that had felt both meaningful and worthwhile and been truly energizing to read — fun in a non-depressing way. I knew that I must have read such a book during this time, and finding it was the logi- cal conclusion to this piece. Racking my brain, thinking of every piece of fiction I read in the last two years, I could not find anything that fit the bill. Design by Reid Graham BRENNA GOSS Daily Arts Writer ERIN EVANS Daily Arts Writer puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com By Judy Hughes ©2022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC 02/23/22 Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis 02/23/22 ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: Release Date: Wednesday, February 23, 2022 ACROSS 1 Pierre’s st. 5 Retro ski area sight 9 Sounding amazed 14 Dance at Jewish weddings 15 Slippery 16 Not exactly a company person 17 Like a GI doing dishes 18 It starts the pot 19 Former Portuguese territory in China 20 Train vigorously 23 Obscure 24 Worldwide cultural org. 27 Part of a play 29 Like wee bairns 30 Street-paving goop 31 Show eager anticipation 35 Citrus drinks 37 Brazil __ 38 Cookies-and- cream ingredient 39 Search everywhere 44 Timeworn 45 Paddle relative 46 Honor society starter 47 Subject of the Book of Proverbs 49 Neither early nor late 54 Work really hard for victory ... and a hint to the start of 20-, 31- and 39-Across 58 Classic mother- and-son statue 60 Pub projectile 61 Yellowish green 62 Primp 63 Geometry product 64 Techie, say 65 Cline of country 66 Sail support 67 “Get lost!” DOWN 1 Exhibited, as a home for sale 2 Hawaiian singing legend 3 Alan of “Argo” 4 Honor society ender 5 Town where the New Jersey (now Brooklyn) Nets played home games for their first year 6 Twisted 7 The “A” in SATB 8 Bar shelf lineup 9 Annual fact book 10 Act bonkers 11 Family tree members 12 North __ 13 Play-for-pay 21 Apple desktop 22 Sings without lyrics 25 Common superhero garb 26 Estimate qualifier 28 Printer supply 29 Prep 31 Bare bones musical notation 32 Loyal end? 33 Heart 34 Garden tool 35 Take __: acknowledge applause 36 Business with a slicer 40 More than needed 41 Soccer great Mia 42 Call to from a distance 43 Clue 48 Sources of high school jitters 50 Anklebone 51 “If only” 52 Old copy machine 53 Four before mayo 55 Dutch cheese 56 __ avis 57 Mining targets 58 Very softly, in music 59 Sr.’s nest egg SUDOKU WHISPER “Has everything worked out yet?” “Froyo is totally out for 2021 AF!!” WHISPER By George Jasper ©2022 Tribune Content Agency, LLC 02/16/22 Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis 02/16/22 ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: Release Date: Wednesday, February 16, 2022 ACROSS 1 Bare-bones 6 Out of concern that 10 Distance runner’s concern 14 Early Greek public space 15 Excessively: Pref. 16 Aerosol target 17 Mall map clarification 19 Half a patio pair 20 Cuban missile crisis strategy 22 Uncertainties 25 Even the queen, in chess 26 Beat in a hot dog contest 27 Like nobility 29 Slow movement 31 Web app for the latest 33 What 15 U.S. presidents formerly were, briefly 36 Son of Chingachgook, in a Cooper novel 37 Be in the red 38 Hustle 40 Shaggy pack animal 41 Pre-wedding show 43 Frequents dive bars, say 45 Pretentious type 46 Key participant 49 NBA tiebreakers 50 Water holder 51 Salad dressing brand ... and what each set of circles reveals 55 Opposed to, in dialect 56 Start of a proverb for which Ben Franklin is credited 60 It’s about a foot 61 “Star Trek: T.N.G.” counselor 62 Do away with 63 Online craft shop 64 Newcastle’s river 65 Summer Triangle star DOWN 1 __ window 2 Before now 3 Thing of little worth 4 Turkey neighbor 5 Whitman’s Sampler choices 6 “Freaky Friday” actress Lindsay 7 First name in daredevilry 8 Saharan 9 Shakes 10 One may be sweet 11 Love to death 12 __ line 13 Cereal killer 18 Artfully escape 21 Listening device 22 Company’s tech guru 23 “Shrek” princess 24 Keep in the supply room 28 NYC airport on Flushing Bay 29 Civil rights legend John 30 Blown away 32 What do you expect? 33 Put out 34 __ New Guinea 35 Perfect thing that’s not beneficial 38 Like idiomatic skeletons 39 Tom, Dick and Harry 41 TV host/ comedian with 23 Emmy nominations 42 In a suitable manner 43 New South Wales capital 44 Jeans brand 46 Part of a process 47 __-year 48 “So long, amigo” 49 Skateboard move 52 Fluctuate 53 “East of Eden” twin 54 Bygone days 57 Stop legally 58 Austin-to- Houston dir. 59 Star of the ball CONNOR JORDAN Daily Arts Contributor Read more at MichiganDaily.com Read more at MichiganDaily.com Design by Jennie Vang Read more at MichiganDaily.com