SPANISH “FLU.”
“Listen here, children,” said Deacon Brown,
“There’s something new just struck dis town;
And it’s among the white and the colored, too,
And I think they all call it de Spanish Flu.
Dey say it starts right in the 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.
— Joe Bogle (1918)
October 1918: World War I rages and another, even more deadly menace, the Great Influenza, threatens the world’s population. An African American man, Joe Bogle, a resident of Knoxville, Tennessee, writes the above poem and publishes it in the October 13, 1918, local paper, The Sunday Journal and Tribune. There is little known about its author and to my knowledge no other poetic works of his extant. What motivated him to write the poem and the paper to publish it? Was this a way to spread the word about the growing threat? At the time there had not been much clamor about the flu in Knoxville or, for that matter, throughout the world. The first phase had been rather mild, and World War I dominated the news. Wartime censors in many countries prohibited the publication of bad news, including reporting on influenza. Overall, there was a spirit of dismissiveness and “stoicism” (Honigsbaum, 2013) about the disease. This attitude is expressed by the poet and soldier, Wilfred Owen, who in a letter writes about the flu: “The thing is much too common for me to take part in. I have quite decided not to!” (found in Honigsbaum, 2013, p. 166.) However, with Fall 1918 came the second wave, a much more virulent mutation. October 1918 saw the most deaths worldwide. In Knoxville, at the time Bogle wrote the poem, there was a growing concern. There were about 1,000 cases (mostly soldiers stationed there) and authorities had issued stay-at-home orders similar to what we have experienced.
The poem was published under the headline: “Negro Writes Poem On “Spanish “Flu,” with the introduction: “Joe Bogle, a Knoxville negro, offers the following lines on Spanish influenza.” Was the paper providing a voice for African Americans? A token voice? This is, after all, the Jim Crow South.
There is a joking, playful tone to the poem, given its sing-song rhyme scheme and nursery rhyme framework. It seems to mock the danger. This tone is not so different than other poems written about the pandemic. But nursery rhymes may contain hidden meanings and are often written about troubling times and events. While something meant to be read to soothe children with its happy ending and rocking cadences, a nursery rhyme contains trauma and tragedy, and, according to Bettelheim (1977), offers the child the lesson that such experiences are essential to development and resourcefulness. Beneath its light surface, this poem may be a clarion call to endure and overcome, especially for the more vulnerable.
Bogle’s poem is constructed from the words of Deacon Brown. It begins as a nursery rhyme (“Listen here, children…”). His name, Brown, seems a linguist signifier that he is African American. He heralds a warning: “…something new just struck dis town…” Influenza was, in fact, not new at the time. In the use of the phrase “something new,” I hear an echo of what is old — the legacy of slavery. Race enters the poem in the declaration that the pandemic impacts both white and people of color. Then, like now, people of color are particularly vulnerable given inadequate access to health care. African Americans in 1918 when admitted to hospitals were usually assigned “to separate wards, often shamefully located in attics or unheated basements” (Davis, 2018, p. 154). The voice of Deacon Brown draws on the vernacular of the African American people in the use of “de” and “Dey.” The author may also be playing with the Spanish preposition (de), one that connotes possession. In this way, the more serious nature of catching the disease, being possessed by it, may be intimated.
The poem reflects on how the body is possessed, with a list of familiar symptoms. Is the poem educational, a public service announcement? If you have these symptoms, “You can just say you got the Spanish Flu.” “You can just say…” comforting and matter-of-fact language. We know something these days of the anxiety that a sore throat and sniffles raise. Is it a cold, the flu, allergies, or COVID? Perhaps there was also this anxiety as this second wave hit Knoxville and the death count rose.
Although public meeting places had been closed, localities made an exception in Knoxville and in other American cities in the fall of 1918. A national effort was underway to raise money for the war by buying Liberty Bonds. To bolster that effort, the Knoxville authorities allowed three days of celebration, the Liberty Bond Drive, featuring bands and a parade. A carnival, it drew large crowds. Bogle references this celebration: Deacon Brown’s brother has “stopped to hear the big band play / Upon the corner of Church and Gay.” The poem was written in the days immediately following the event, a super-spreader of its day.
Then there are the most curious lines: “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.” The threat of the disease hides beneath the surface nonchalance. There is a reference to the early indication of disease (a tickle in the throat) and bemusement (the Deacon is tickled) that John has abandoned the festivities for fear of contracting the disease. John has just “heard about” the disease. Why is that? Because he is uneducated and can’t read the papers? The Deacon makes light of his brother’s fear, yet cases and deaths rose sharply following the festival. It would be hard for anyone, especially a person of color, to criticize the decision to allow the carnival. Such criticism would have been regarded as unpatriotic. Yet the poem, perhaps written in anger following the event, may be doing just that.
At the end of the poem, a doctor has diagnosed “this country guy” (another reference that he is African American?) with the flu and sent him home to quarantine: “’Good night,’ you got the Spanish Flu.” Medical advice then, as now, was to stay home and quarantine. We hear the overt reassurance but feel the hidden darker truth. Knoxville General Hospital, the only hospital in the area, just after the publication of the poem had beds for less than 1% of those inflicted (Neely, 2020).
Stylistically, the poem also reveals its hidden meanings. comprised of couplets, a form associated with love poems and children’s rhymes, the poem rhymes predictably, conveying both a sense of lightness, but also intimating what else is predictable (the highly contagious illness). The implication here stylistically may be (to riff on Winnicott) that there is no such thing as a person separate from the flu. The lines themselves have a predictable cadence (usually two phrases to a line) that propels the poem along as the ill body prods on.
Bogle’s poem, at once deceptively simple, operates on multiple levels: a work of art, a historical record, an informational piece, and perhaps an act of protest.
7 By 1920, the disease impacted 1/3 of the world’s population.
8 I found the poem originally on a website published by the Knoxville History Project. Curiously, the poem presented there differs from the original newspaper publication in terms of structure of stanzas, punctuation and, most noticeably, alteration of the vernacular language.
References
Bettelheim, B. (1977). The uses of enchantment: The meaning and importance of fairy tales. Alfred A. Knopf.
Bogle, J. (1918, October 13). Spanish “Flu.” The Sunday Journal and Tribune, 6.
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/49187669/spanish-flu-a-poem-by-joe-bogle
Davis, K. (2018). The hidden history of the Spanish Flu and the first world war. Henry Holt and Co.
Honigsbaum, M. (2013). Regulating the 1918-1919 pandemic: Flu, stoicism and the Northcliffe Press. Med. Hist. (2),165-185. https://doi:10.1017/mdh.2012.101
Neely, J. (2020, April 3). The Spanish Flu: How 1918 was the same – and very different. The Knoxville History Project.
https://knoxvillehistoryproject.org/2020/04/03/the-spanish-flu1918-how-1918-was-the-same-and-very-different/
