Malaria, Poems

Foreword by Leah Kaminsky

xi LEAH KAMINSKY “Bad air” is the English translation of the Italian neologism malaria. One bite from the female Anopheles mosquito and the very breath of life is threatened. In the Western world, malaria is a word we speak of perhaps most frequently when planning our summer vacations to exotic destinations. We are privy to medication that prevents infection, keeping us safe from “the world’s perfect killer.” This is not so for people in other parts of the world. Sir Gustav Nossal, a formidable researcher in the field, points out: “it is unconscionable . . . for people to still be dying from diseases that the developed world conquered fifty years ago.” And it is with curiosity, intelligence, and outright rage that Conaway confronts the plague of malaria across the globe. He dives at the subject matter with stinging poetry, so fierce it penetrates the reader’s skin, leaving her dizzy and feverish with the power of taut language, infected with Conaway’s outcry against the injustice of “the poor going to war for our / sweet wants.” He is a moral tour guide, taking us into the “tropical theaters of war” where “malaria has killed more men than mortar round.” He walks us past the child with cerebral malaria, who cannot lift her arms to hold her baby brother, past the stillborn baby slung over an infected mother’s arm, one of 200,000 “birthed treasures” buried every year in Africa. And he prods at my own profession, who in their search for breakthroughs, stay safely locked behind sealed laboratory doors, where too often “miracles aren’t.” Conaway shows us the horror he has seen that is malaria: “although solutions may be on the other side of the blur, I am far closer to the problems.” These are poems of witness and social injustice, airing corruption along the way. By far the greatest strength in this collection is how Conaway, in every poem, unflinchingly reminds the reader “each other is ourselves.” F O R E W O R D M A L A R I A P O E M S ...