The pandemic we are still living through has been largely framed in statistical terms which do not capture the human cost of the isolation, political upheaval, and natural disasters that many people have also struggled with during this time. The poetry in A Function of Plagues is a deeply personal reaction to the difficult emotional truth of survival after loss. How do we mourn? How do we honor the changes which come? The poems in this collection wrestle with these questions, and consider the powerful role of memory in finding a way forward.