Voices in remembrance of the 1918 influenza: Kyrie

2018-11-14

University of Virginia. School of Medicine

The 1918 influenza pandemic was a global calamity that brought death on an unprecedented scale and intensified the devastating impact of World War I even as the armistice was signed in November 1918. Statistics tell the tale of this flu in one way, science tells it in another, but this Medical Center Hour—the third in a mini-series marking the pandemic's centenary—lets poetry speak to the human toll exacted by the 1918 H1N1 virus. In 1995, Virginia native and distinguished poet Ellen Bryant Voigt published Kyrie, a book-length sequence of poems in which small town speakers live through the harrowing epidemic and remember, defy, and mourn. Kyrie's fierce, moving poetry brings the global calamity home. In this Medical Center Hour, Voigt (on video) reads selections from Kyrie and discusses with poet Marianne Boruch the making and meaning of this American masterpiece.

Co-presented with the Bjoring Center for Nursing Historical Inquiry, Historical Collections in the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, and Influenza! 1918-2018

Voigt, Ellen Bryant, 1943- (Speaker); Boruch, Marianne, 1950- (Speaker); Childress, Marcia Day (Moderator); University of Virginia. School of Medicine

Claude Moore Health Sciences Library

Filmed lectures

Influenza Epidemic (1918-1919); Literature and medicine; American poetry

Medical Center Hour

Claude Moore Health Sciences Library

English

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1 online resource (1 video file, 55:29 min.) : sound, color