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Kyrie: Poems
"Voigt's language dares to stir the dead, to remind us that we are temporary survivors."―Geoffrey Wolff In this mosaic of sonnets, her fifth collection, Ellen Bryant Voigt takes on a monumental challenge: to conjure up the influenza pandemic of 1918-19, a little-recorded event that killed 25 million worldwide, half a million in America alone. The Nation calls Kyrie "an astonishing collection . . . so spare and tightly woven, yet so mindful of the cadences of the speaking voice, that the poems read like verse drama."
Starting with the family, Voigt creates voices that gather into one vast community story, a "true tour de force" ( Boston Sunday Globe ) that speaks to our own time of plague.
Starting with the family, Voigt creates voices that gather into one vast community story, a "true tour de force" ( Boston Sunday Globe ) that speaks to our own time of plague.
80 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 43 reviews
March 1, 2022
As reviewed in Quick Lit on Modern Mrs Darcy.
I picked up Kyrie at the suggestion of an author friend who told me it was simply stunning and I had to read it—but when I began I had NO IDEA this collection of blank verse sonnets was about the 1918 influenza pandemic. The dedication, drawn from Alfred Crosby's book America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918, reads, "Nothing else—no infection, no war, no famine—has ever killed so many in as short a period."
I'm glad I read this, but emotionally, it was a tough go, with lines like, "The weeks of fewer cases were a tease" and "How we survived: we locked the doors and let nobody in." Published in 1995, this is already a modern classic, and I expect readers will be returning to this collection for decades to come.
I picked up Kyrie at the suggestion of an author friend who told me it was simply stunning and I had to read it—but when I began I had NO IDEA this collection of blank verse sonnets was about the 1918 influenza pandemic. The dedication, drawn from Alfred Crosby's book America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918, reads, "Nothing else—no infection, no war, no famine—has ever killed so many in as short a period."
I'm glad I read this, but emotionally, it was a tough go, with lines like, "The weeks of fewer cases were a tease" and "How we survived: we locked the doors and let nobody in." Published in 1995, this is already a modern classic, and I expect readers will be returning to this collection for decades to come.
April 21, 2020
A book of sonnets about the 1918 pandemic, timely reading, and wonderful if heartbreaking.
History is organic, a great tree,
along the starched corduroy of its bark
the healed scars, the seasonal losses
so asymmetrical, so common--
why should you set out to count?
Don't you people have sufficient woe?
History is organic, a great tree,
along the starched corduroy of its bark
the healed scars, the seasonal losses
so asymmetrical, so common--
why should you set out to count?
Don't you people have sufficient woe?
Read
February 15, 2016Every once in a while I re-read this one to torture myself with the knowledge that are stunningly ambitious flawless masterpieces in the world, and some of them are little books of connected sonnets....
April 15, 2022
Would I have enjoyed these blank verse sonnets about the flu pandemic of 1918 as much if I’d read it before our current pandemic? Likely not but it resonated now and that’s all that matters.
CW: flu pandemic of 1918, death of children/parents/spouses, war references, labor and delivery, miscarriages and stillbirths, death of animals/pets
CW: flu pandemic of 1918, death of children/parents/spouses, war references, labor and delivery, miscarriages and stillbirths, death of animals/pets
November 22, 2021
Heartbreakingly beautiful collection of related blank verse sonnets dealing with the 1918 influenza pandemic. Perhaps I am a masochist seeking this out now or perhaps current events made it more meaningful and striking. Regardless I am sure I will reread, discuss and recommend this little book.
December 3, 2021
This was an excellent book of poems by Ellen Bryant Voigt. The poems are mostly sonnets about the 1918-1919 influenza epidemic that killed 25 million people worldwide. You can't really call a book of poetry prescient or prophetic if the poet is writing about events from history but, wow, it is more than a bit disconcerting how much the poems in this book speak to what is occurring on a daily basis all over the world right now.
The cover blurbs called the poems haunting and that is certainly true. Voigt intertwines poems about WWI and families experiencing the pandemic at home which, when you think about it, both caused a huge loss of life and devastated families. How many families had sons killed in the war and then lost sons and daughters due to the influenza and how many soldiers came home to virus devastated families?
Having only read the the book jacket information, I quickly realized how haunting the poems would be after reading the prologue:
After the first year, weeds and scrub;
after five, juniper and birch,
alders filling in among the briars;
ten more years, maples rise and thicken;
forty years, the birches crowded out,
a new world swarms on the floor of the hardwood forest.
And who can tell us where there was an orchard,
where a swing, where the smokehouse stood?
Below is what I consider one of the more moving poems:
To be brought from the bright schoolyard into the house:
to stand by her bed like an animal stunned in the pen:
against the grid of the quilt, her hand seems
stitched to the cuff of its sleeve-although he wants
most urgently the hand to stroke his head,
although he thinks he could kneel down
that it would need to travel only inches
to brush like a breath his flushed cheek,
he doesn't stir: all his resolve,
all his resources go to watching her,
her mouth, her hair a pillow of blackened ferns-
he means to match her stillness bone for bone.
Nearby he hears the younger children cry,
and his aunts, like careless thieves, out in the kitchen.
It is hard to read about any pandemic right now but I found these poems highly affecting and it makes me wonder what poets both present and future are and will be writing about our present pandemic. Let's hope they are as emotionally poignant as the poems in Ellen Bryan Voigt's Kyrie.
The cover blurbs called the poems haunting and that is certainly true. Voigt intertwines poems about WWI and families experiencing the pandemic at home which, when you think about it, both caused a huge loss of life and devastated families. How many families had sons killed in the war and then lost sons and daughters due to the influenza and how many soldiers came home to virus devastated families?
Having only read the the book jacket information, I quickly realized how haunting the poems would be after reading the prologue:
After the first year, weeds and scrub;
after five, juniper and birch,
alders filling in among the briars;
ten more years, maples rise and thicken;
forty years, the birches crowded out,
a new world swarms on the floor of the hardwood forest.
And who can tell us where there was an orchard,
where a swing, where the smokehouse stood?
Below is what I consider one of the more moving poems:
To be brought from the bright schoolyard into the house:
to stand by her bed like an animal stunned in the pen:
against the grid of the quilt, her hand seems
stitched to the cuff of its sleeve-although he wants
most urgently the hand to stroke his head,
although he thinks he could kneel down
that it would need to travel only inches
to brush like a breath his flushed cheek,
he doesn't stir: all his resolve,
all his resources go to watching her,
her mouth, her hair a pillow of blackened ferns-
he means to match her stillness bone for bone.
Nearby he hears the younger children cry,
and his aunts, like careless thieves, out in the kitchen.
It is hard to read about any pandemic right now but I found these poems highly affecting and it makes me wonder what poets both present and future are and will be writing about our present pandemic. Let's hope they are as emotionally poignant as the poems in Ellen Bryan Voigt's Kyrie.
June 29, 2020
As we live through the Covid-19 pandemic, I've been drawn to art about the 1918 flu pandemic that killed over half a million Americans and has been largely forgotten. Our collective consciousness remains unscarred by it, and the reasons for its disappearance from memory are not clear. Too horrific to contemplate? Perhaps. Ellen Bryant Voigt's "Kryie" is one of the few works of art about the 1918 pandemic. It consists of sonnets that bear witness to the lives lost and those left behind who were traumatized. Well worth your time if you're interested in this subject. I can't help but wonder how this pandemic will be remembered. Let it not be forgotten.
I highly recommend this PBS documentary about the 1918 pandemic. It's streaming for free until the end of July 2020.
I've created this shelf of books about the 1918 pandemic or that mention it if anyone is interested.
This is the double bed where she'd been born,
bed of her mother's marriage and decline,
bed her sisters also ripened in,
bed that drew her husband to her side,
bed of her one child lost and five delivered,
bed indifferent to the many bodies,
bed around which all of them were gathered,
watery shapes in the shadows of the room,
and the bed frail abroad the violent ocean,
the frightened beasts so clumsy and pathetic,
heaving their wet breath against her neck,
she threw off the pile of quilts--white face like a moon--
and then entered straightway into heaven
***
To have inherited a child, angry
and grieving; to have opened her rusted heart
that first full inch; to feel it seize on the cold air
rushing in; and now to pretend his story,
lost in the deep thicket of the others,
is not hers: he stole again from the store,
she whipped him home and locked him in the barn,
he set the barn on fire and ran away.
How could that be her sister's boy, asleep
in the trundle bed, or ratcheting through the field--
he loved to be outside--from the porch she'd see
the top of his head, golden as the wheat,
parting the wheat, and then the wheat
closing up behind him without a seam.
***
Why did you have to go back, go back
to that awful time, upstream, scavenging
the human wreckage, what happened or what we did
or failed to do? Why drag us back to the ditch?
Have you no regard for oblivion?
History is organic, a great tree,
along the starched corduroy of its bark
the healed scars, the seasonal losses
so asymmetrical, so common--
why should you set out to count?
Don't you people have sufficient woe?
I highly recommend this PBS documentary about the 1918 pandemic. It's streaming for free until the end of July 2020.
I've created this shelf of books about the 1918 pandemic or that mention it if anyone is interested.
This is the double bed where she'd been born,
bed of her mother's marriage and decline,
bed her sisters also ripened in,
bed that drew her husband to her side,
bed of her one child lost and five delivered,
bed indifferent to the many bodies,
bed around which all of them were gathered,
watery shapes in the shadows of the room,
and the bed frail abroad the violent ocean,
the frightened beasts so clumsy and pathetic,
heaving their wet breath against her neck,
she threw off the pile of quilts--white face like a moon--
and then entered straightway into heaven
***
To have inherited a child, angry
and grieving; to have opened her rusted heart
that first full inch; to feel it seize on the cold air
rushing in; and now to pretend his story,
lost in the deep thicket of the others,
is not hers: he stole again from the store,
she whipped him home and locked him in the barn,
he set the barn on fire and ran away.
How could that be her sister's boy, asleep
in the trundle bed, or ratcheting through the field--
he loved to be outside--from the porch she'd see
the top of his head, golden as the wheat,
parting the wheat, and then the wheat
closing up behind him without a seam.
***
Why did you have to go back, go back
to that awful time, upstream, scavenging
the human wreckage, what happened or what we did
or failed to do? Why drag us back to the ditch?
Have you no regard for oblivion?
History is organic, a great tree,
along the starched corduroy of its bark
the healed scars, the seasonal losses
so asymmetrical, so common--
why should you set out to count?
Don't you people have sufficient woe?
June 30, 2021
Book of poems eulogizing the victims of the Spanish Flu in 1918 as well as WWI. An important read for 2021.
March 28, 2012
A sequence of linked blank verse sonnets which addresses the repercussions of the 1918 influenza epidemic.
This is a book that provides examples of crafting... sonnets of reflections; sonnets about different people, Mattie, the Doctor, sonnets that are strictly metaphor.
The epilogue, written in six tercets draws the curtain with a snow storm-- first the window pane, filled with sleet,
"loud sheets of it", then the view of the blurred horizon and stone walls, "made // from what the earth cast up and didn't need." A memory of field in summer, and a horse, "now/ every stalk in the field in beaten down."
I love this final tercet:
"Such is the world our world is nestled in.
then in italics, as if a different voice: "And what if the horse were installed in the barn with a bucket of oats?"
and the final line:
Shush, says winter, blown against the window.
This is a book that provides examples of crafting... sonnets of reflections; sonnets about different people, Mattie, the Doctor, sonnets that are strictly metaphor.
The epilogue, written in six tercets draws the curtain with a snow storm-- first the window pane, filled with sleet,
"loud sheets of it", then the view of the blurred horizon and stone walls, "made // from what the earth cast up and didn't need." A memory of field in summer, and a horse, "now/ every stalk in the field in beaten down."
I love this final tercet:
"Such is the world our world is nestled in.
then in italics, as if a different voice: "And what if the horse were installed in the barn with a bucket of oats?"
and the final line:
Shush, says winter, blown against the window.
December 25, 2012
A poignant collection of poems about the influenza epidemic of 1918. Due to the timing of this epidemic, a lot of the poems are also concerned with WWI. In my opinion, Ellen Bryant Voigt is one of the best poets of our time.
September 9, 2012
A tremendous piece of craftsmanship. A study in perspectives, in voice, in the sonnet as a form. I plan to teach the book as a whole for the first time this spring.
Read
March 12, 2018I selected this book because the last poetry book I read I really liked. I never really started reading poetry until this year but I discovered that I love it! The poems are so relatable and have amazing messages to them. I read the back of the book and it said that the author Ellem Bryant Voigt incorporates both scientific and spiritual visions. To be honest...I was intrigued but didn't ready know what it meant, until I read Kyrie!
The book is about a plague and the heart wrenching stories about how people were effected by it. It is a difficult book to understand and I definitely am not 100% sure what some of the poems meaning or stories are but the ones I did get were amazing! They are about how family's and friends are suffering and coping through they're lives.
I think the author did a very good job at portraying peoples pain and you could definitely feel it. They put a lot of complex vocabulary and really brought a lot of compassion to their stories. I think what did't work was it was hard for a high school student to understand some of the things and the way they were being said. There were a lot of poems that were too advanced for me to understand.
I don't think I would recommend this book to a person my age, only because I really had to read through multiple times and sometimes I still couldn't comprehend. But, I do think an adult would really enjoy this. Overall the book Kyrie was ok.
The book is about a plague and the heart wrenching stories about how people were effected by it. It is a difficult book to understand and I definitely am not 100% sure what some of the poems meaning or stories are but the ones I did get were amazing! They are about how family's and friends are suffering and coping through they're lives.
I think the author did a very good job at portraying peoples pain and you could definitely feel it. They put a lot of complex vocabulary and really brought a lot of compassion to their stories. I think what did't work was it was hard for a high school student to understand some of the things and the way they were being said. There were a lot of poems that were too advanced for me to understand.
I don't think I would recommend this book to a person my age, only because I really had to read through multiple times and sometimes I still couldn't comprehend. But, I do think an adult would really enjoy this. Overall the book Kyrie was ok.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 24, 2020
"Like the beasts in their holes,
no on stirred--if not sick
exhausted or afraid."
I've been bingeing poetry since this at-home season began. Having run through most of my t0-do list, I was looking back at some best of lists in order to see what I might want to order next and this volume was included in one: A series of poems about the 1918 flu pandemic.
These are beautiful, harrowing poems. When published the book was trying to tell people about an experience long forgotten by most. Survive the war but not the sickness. One family struck down while the neighbors never got ill. Anger and fear at strangers. Envy that those who were well. The second wave. Funerals with few people. Dying at home in the bed where they had given birth. Prayers to God.
We have now had some of these experiences are selves and will likely experience others. Here are words to help us grasp our time.
no on stirred--if not sick
exhausted or afraid."
I've been bingeing poetry since this at-home season began. Having run through most of my t0-do list, I was looking back at some best of lists in order to see what I might want to order next and this volume was included in one: A series of poems about the 1918 flu pandemic.
These are beautiful, harrowing poems. When published the book was trying to tell people about an experience long forgotten by most. Survive the war but not the sickness. One family struck down while the neighbors never got ill. Anger and fear at strangers. Envy that those who were well. The second wave. Funerals with few people. Dying at home in the bed where they had given birth. Prayers to God.
We have now had some of these experiences are selves and will likely experience others. Here are words to help us grasp our time.
June 7, 2023
If you want a reference for how many ways to vary a sonnet this is a must-read. Her craft is stunning in places, though I also felt at times the form was forced for the sake of the sequence.
The subject matter is heartwrenching and convicting. There are moments when Voigt shines: the language catches you right at the throat of your heart. Her ability to evoke emotion THROUGH her restraint is both worthy of admiration and of an attempt at emulation.
The subject matter is heartwrenching and convicting. There are moments when Voigt shines: the language catches you right at the throat of your heart. Her ability to evoke emotion THROUGH her restraint is both worthy of admiration and of an attempt at emulation.
June 30, 2020
When the COVID-19 pandemic started I thought of this book and decided to revisit it. The poems really bring us into the personal space and struggles— physician and moral— that we as humans face with courage and sometimes failure. It also is a reminder what we are being asked to sacrifice and opens questions to living differently than the one way we were taught is best.
October 30, 2020
In this collection of linked sonnets Voigt seamlessly melds syntactical elegance with organic form and convincing persona to convincingly explore life during the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic. As relevant today as the time period it treats and equally impressive in craft as the day it was published, this is yet another collection of poems that I read again and again.
February 23, 2022
These are the fictionalized accounts of experiences during the 1918 flu pandemic in verse. Some resonate (for better or worse) with our recent COVID pandemic.
I learned, or maybe appreciated more, from these poems the role the ending WWI had on spreading the pandemic all around the world. I think I kind of knew that, but maybe hadn’t quite internalized that.
I learned, or maybe appreciated more, from these poems the role the ending WWI had on spreading the pandemic all around the world. I think I kind of knew that, but maybe hadn’t quite internalized that.
March 24, 2022
Of the poetry I've read recently, this one was the best for me even if it was quite sad. I think sonnet length is just about right. I enjoyed that all of the poems were linked by subject matter as well, Spanish flu pandemic and the end of WW1. Some of the poems were very similar to life of the past two years.
April 3, 2022
This was a MMDBC flight pick for reading poetry in the month of April. I enjoyed this collection since I just finished Amanda Gormans collection.
The poem on page 52 really struck a chord with me. I have some strong emotions after working with Covid patients and poetry can express my feelings better than I can articulate.
The poem on page 52 really struck a chord with me. I have some strong emotions after working with Covid patients and poetry can express my feelings better than I can articulate.
November 25, 2023
Really lovely collection. I didn’t realize it was about my favorite pandemic, that was a nice surprise. I’ve read a lot of books around this topic now, might be time to take a step back and see what I’ve learned.
November 19, 2018
The great influenza pandemic of 1918 was the inspiration for this sobering collection of sonnets. Haunting images linger throughout, but recovery, too.
March 17, 2020
The only book I could think about reading right now.
January 10, 2022
Beautiful and haunting.
May 6, 2022
The voices are so poignant in these poems. Heartbreaking and hard to read but beautiful in their own way.
May 31, 2022
Beautiful poetry that tells a story of the 1918 Flu pandemic. So many parallels to our times.
April 16, 2022
• ModernMrsDarcy.com #MMD book flight pick for April 2022 #MMDBookClub (5 poetry collections flight picks
Read for National Poetry Month (April 2022). 89 pages.
Subject: 1918 Influenza Plague
"Ellen Bryant Voigt's new collection of terrifying and celebratory sonnets imaginatively recreates voices lost
in the pandemic. ..[Her] vivid characters put a human face on this massive loss. Their individual testimonies climb and blend into a single human voice singing against the plague."
-Missouri Review
Read for National Poetry Month (April 2022). 89 pages.
Subject: 1918 Influenza Plague
"Ellen Bryant Voigt's new collection of terrifying and celebratory sonnets imaginatively recreates voices lost
in the pandemic. ..[Her] vivid characters put a human face on this massive loss. Their individual testimonies climb and blend into a single human voice singing against the plague."
-Missouri Review
Displaying 1 - 29 of 43 reviews