Lyme disease, caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi transmitted by the deer tick (Ixodes scapularis), was identified and described as a new disease entity in 1975 following an outbreak in Lyme, Connecticut. The disease was fully characterised by 1982 by Willy Burgdorfer, and it has since become the most common vector-borne disease in North America and a significant health problem in Europe. The deer tick and its Lyme-causing bacteria have spread as deer populations have rebounded across North American forests, creating a new human-parasite relationship in the second half of the twentieth century.

Lyme disease, uniquely among tick-borne illnesses, has generated a significant body of contemporary American literary writing — memoir, essay, and poetry — reflecting on the experience of tick bite, illness, and the complex relationship between Americans and the woodland landscapes they have reclaimed from farming. Writers including Porochista Khakpour and many others have written about chronic Lyme as an illness with profound identity and political dimensions. The tick, like the flea and the louse before it, has entered contemporary American poetry as a figure for the intimate, invisible dangers lurking in the most familiar landscapes.