Kyrie, Ellen Voigt's 1995 collection of poems, takes the Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919 as its inspiration. Voigt's narrative poems create distinct characters (the members of a rural American family) in order to illustrate the suffering and the small redemptions of the winter of 1918-1919. The poems are written as letters, prayers, songs, and even sorrowful curses as the daily life and the inner thoughts of various family members are explored. One poem beautifully describes a bed used by the family: "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..."

Other poems deal with marriage and piano-playing, as well as hogs and chickens. Voigt is truly a master of the narrative poem; these untraditional, free-verse sonnets are musical and wry. What other contemporary poet can riff on hogs "Hogs aren't pretty but they're smart,/ and clean as you let them be" AND write such good metaphors: "We rode the mule to lessons, birds on a branch--/you know what it means to have your own piano?"

Voigt's illustration of a lesser-known chapter of American history is profoundly written, and her characters are inviting. Any reader will enjoy Kyrie.

Voigt's music reminds me of a DJ spinning records, changing the sound, the pitch, the timing to a great effect.

The ghazal written to Shahid Ali is among the most beautiful I have read in English...

Ellen Bryant Voigt's "Shadow of Heaven" is a moveable feast of words and images that have great "carrying" power. I love poems that you read and then carry those words and images with you through the day - and weeks and years - after you read them. A fine example is *The Others* on Page 23. This poem alone is worth the price of admission and I promise you will never look at Michelangelo's Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel ceiling the same way again.