Michael Thurston, associate professor of English language and literature

“Kyrie explores the 1919 Spanish influenza epidemic through the
eyes and voices of several residents of a small American town. Young
men from the town go off to fight in the First World War while other
members of their families stay home. The joy of reunions when the
soldiers return is complicated by the outbreak of illness. Voigt makes
the grief and anxiety attendant upon the epidemic palpable in these
poems, the emotional power of which makes one almost forget that
these are sonnets and that Voigt is quietly ringing changes on a very
old poetic form.”