Poetic Influences of the Spanish Pandemic (Group 5)
With the advent of the coronavirus pandemic and the many tragedies, memes, deniers, heroes, and villains that spawned from it, we forget to mention the Spanish Flu that happened over a century prior to the current pandemic we are now facing. Because of that, we also forget the poetry that was invented in response to the Spanish flu pandemic, amongst the other forms of entertainment that reveals how we treated the pandemic at the time. This exhibit will be done to commemorate and highlight poetry and the state of the world around the time of the pandemic from a century ago, as we still on the road to recovery from the pandemic occurring today.
For this first example, Yosano Akiko will be discussed.
Yosano Akiko is a Japanese poet and writer who contributed to Japanese feminism, civil rights, and social reform. While her life was a long one filled with many struggles and successes, she lived during and past the Spanish flu, with her writing poetry and essays on the pandemic, one being titled “Shi no kyofu,” or The Fear of Death, another titled “Kanbō no toko kara,” or From an Influenza Sickbed, and “Eisei to chiryō,” Hygiene and Treatment, all in response to the Spanish flu and the Japanese not paying attention and outright disregarding the pandemic as a whole. Her bravery and resilience during the whole event truly reflects in her writing of the Spanish flu, and how creatives all over remain steadfast in expressing themselves and the truth to the people that would listen.
In this photo, a typist is wearing her mask to protect herself from the Spanish flu, and as devastating as the pandemic was, there were still people that wrote and found entertainment to counter its severity. This picture feels as if its embodying the spirits of writers and others who survived during the Spanish flu pandemic, and how they still attempted to continue living normal life despite the circumstances occurring in their daily lives. Though it seems more to be towards the Spanish flu pandemic as a whole, this picture just goes to show how people continued to write despite the circumstances that presented itself.
A poem by Jesse Daniel Boone, a poet who happened to be an author of a local newspaper.
SPRING — POEM, INDEPENDENCE REPORTER, MARCH 14, 1918
A limpid smile,
The cooling of countless zephyrs,
Sky-weeping and love and mud and hookey from school;
A boy in love,
A girl, too.
April odors,
May and love
June in the offing
(Blow, breezes, blow)
With Lohengrin or Mendelssohn—what care I?
(Bloom, blossoms, bloom
But ah!
Contemptible mutability!
Winds high and winds shifting to the west and northwest,
Vicious inconsistency,
Catarrh and influenza,
Rain,
Sleet,
Snow,
Zero – o – o – o – o.
Bronchitis,
And then the narrow couch.
A poem from the Independence Reporter, a newspaper from Kansas
The Spanish Flu
“Listen here, children,” said Deacon Brown,
“There’s something new just struck this town
And it’s among the white and the colored, too
And I think they call it the Spanish Flu.”
They say it starts right in your head:
You begin to sneeze and your eyes turn red.
You then have a tight feeling in your chest,
And you cough at night and you just can’t rest.
Your head feels dizzy when you are on your feet;
You go to your table and you just can’t eat.
And if this ever happens to you,
You can just say you got the Spanish Flu.
Now, I got a brother and his name is John,
And he went to buy a Liberty Bond.
And he stopped to hear the big band play,
Upon the corner of Church and Gay.
But when he heard about the Flu–
It tickled me and would tickle you–
He bought his bond and went away:
Said he’d hear the band some other day.
But just as he got down on Vine,
He began to stagger like he was blind.
And a doctor who was passing by
Said, “What is the matter with this country guy?”
But as soon as he asked John a question or two,
He said, “Good night, you got the Spanish Flu.”
A poem by Joe Bogle, a Black man who once lived in Knoxville with his family.
Works Cited
Yosano Picture: Belchman, J. (2020, July 29). Yosano Akiko and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918–21. Retrieved from Nippon.com: https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/b09008/#
Knoxville Poem: Bogle, J. (2020, March 26). THE SPANISH FLU POEM, 1918. Retrieved from Knoxville History Project: https://knoxvillehistoryproject.org/2020/03/26/the-spanish-flu-poem-1918/
Jesse Daniel Boone's Poem: Boone, J. D. (1918, October 17). Spanish Flu Poem by Jesse Daniel Boone. Retrieved from Newspapers.com: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/48416543/spanish-flu-poem-by-jesse-daniel-boone/
Typist Picture: Foss, K. A. (2020, July 31). How the 1918 Pandemic Got Meme-ified in Jokes, Songs and Poems. Retrieved from Smithsonian Magazine: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/memes-1918-pandemic-180975452/
Spring Poem: The Independence, Kansas. (1918, March 14). SPRING — POEM, INDEPENDENCE REPORTER, MARCH 14, 1918. Retrieved from Spanish Influenza in Victoria, Canada, 1918-1920: http://spanishfluvictoriabc.com/spanish-flu-origin-spread-character/spring-poem-in-the-independence-reporter-march-14-1918/