The Poetry of Failure

Institutional records and reports, letters, and logbook entries are often the bread and butter of historical research, and the experience of extracting the depth and texture of these resources draws us back to the archive. Still, creative inspiration can wax and wane throughout a long project. In this essay, Johnson explores the utility of poetic inquiry as a method for getting “unstuck” in the face of waning inspiration. Poetic inquiry relies on a close reading of the source material, followed by the extraction and artful rearrangement of words and phrases that highlight themes in the original text. Johnson deploys poetic inquiry to analyze the student records of influenza orphans at Girard College. Accentuating the original texture and color of the sources, Johnson assembles three short, haiku-style poems distilling the resilience of influenza survivors, whose relationships ably stretched across new geographies and institutions following separation in the pandemic aftermath. Ultimately, the practice underscores how poetry and historical analysis connect us to the depth of human experience.