2020 is the centennial of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, making women's suffrage--the right to vote--the law. Shout! is a collection of original poetry and dramatic dialogs written from the points of view of core suffragist figures ranging from the 1848 Seneca Falls Woman’s Rights Convention to the passing of the 19th Amendment in 1920. In these pages, Elizabeth Cady Stanton strategizes with Susan B. Anthony, who, in turn, argues with Frederick Douglass over who should get the vote first: blacks or women. Matilda Joslyn Gage tells us how she became the model for the Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, imprisoned and on hunger strike, are tortured and force-fed for the cause. Defying attempts to exclude her, Ida B. Wells marches for suffrage among 6,000 white women in 1913 Woman Suffrage Parade. And key figures retell the passage of the amendment as it comes down to one dramatic vote in Tennessee. These more than 40 courageous women and righteous men populate Susanna’s first-person, present-tense narratives that bring us into four-dimensional, you-are-here experiences of the 72-year fight for women’s suffrage. As John F. Kennedy said at the inauguration of the Robert Frost Library, “When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.”
With Shout, Susanna Rich brings out the broom, the bucket, and the brush.
With COVID-19, 2020 also uncannily marks the centennial of has been called "The Spanish Flu"—a pandemic that killed more than 50 million between 1918 and 1920. “I am Lavinia Lloyd Dock (1858-1956)” is a poem written from the point of view of a 20th century pre-eminent nurse and suffragist battling Woodrow Wilson who ignored both The Cause of suffrage and the ravages of the flu, in order to promote his agenda in World War I. The parallels between 1920 and 2020 will amaze readers.
I am Lavinia Lloyd Dock (1858-1956)
“The Spanish Lady,” they call it, “Purple Death”— the January 1918 to December 1920 flu pandemic— “German Pest,” “Blitzkatarrh,” “Flander’s Fever”— “The Blacks’ Disease,” “White Man’s Disease”— all scapegoating practiced by the ignorant and craven.
Europe doesn’t start the flu. Woodrow Wilson does when he declares America for World War I. Plagues are spread by commerce and war. Our plague starts in Camp Funston in Kansas; and Camp Devens, Massachusetts—
tens of thousands of conscripted men in close barracks, dropping as suddenly as if they’ve been shot. Still, sick recruits are crammed into troop ships, deployed to the European front. The war is all to Wilson—dismissing the flu
that kills 50 million, our young soldiers drowning in their own mucus and blood— vigorous constitutions unknowing what is host, what invader—attacking themselves— mustard-colored suppurating blisters,
mahogany spots on their cheeks, blue as huckleberries, wild blind eyes. At home, la grippe—flamethrower, grenade, machine gun—burns through mass gatherings— Liberty Bond parades and conferences
to finance the war. 675,000 Americans die. And in churches congregants collapse in their pews. I have no religious belief and I have no need of it. It’s not about God. It’s about human politics, the rape of Mother Earth.
The First World War starts not for lofty ideals but for worldwide reactionary elements— monarchies over there, millionaire corporations here— wanting oil, land, and the subjugation of workers and women.
I am born into wealth, but choose to be a nurse, 20 years in New York’s Henry Street Settlement, with poor, immigrant women and laborers— those most likely to succumb to yellow fever, typhoid, the flu; syphilis, infant and childbirth mortality.
The antidote to the disease of war is women’s voices, women’s votes— the very women who man the farms, the munitions factories, the old and young; who, as mothers and nurses serve the war—
the Sallies of the Salvation Army, the Red Cross Nurses, and the women officers frying doughnuts in helmets for the soldiers. Women, who birth human cannon fodder, who clean up after men are truly invested
in ending all wars. Unrelenting, we suffragists campaign, tour the country, persist. I walk from New York to Washington, DC, to march in the 1913 Woman’s Suffrage Parade. 1917-1920, through the worst of this ravaging contagion,
through the raging war, we wage our peaceful battles for all humankind. Through ice, and heat, and the angry spittle of hecklers, we stand, Silent Sentinels picketing Wilson’s White House. Wilson ordains that we be arrested, jailed, tortured
into silence. No matter: It is a great joy to do a little guerilla war in the cause… going to jail gives me a purer feeling of unalloyed content than I’ve ever had in any of my other work.
“Spanish Lady”—what a blind misnomer for this raving, rampaging disease embodied by those who rule; best, with 20/20 vision, call it “The American Lord.”
Specializing in writing historical poetry, Susanna is twice an Emmy-Award nominee, a Fulbright Fellow in Creative Writing, and the recipient of the Presidential Excellence Award for Distinguished Teaching at Kean University. Visit her at www.wildnightsproductions.com.
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