Cemeteries
04/26/2011
04/24/2011
02/11/2011
08/07/2010
06/02/2010
05/23/2010
Digging Up the Grave of Elizabeth Oakes Smith
In a few minutes we are going to go digging for the grave of Maine-born and New York died 19th Century poet and activist, Elizabeth Oakes Smith.
There is a story online of a kind fireman who loving tends to her broken and utterly forgotten grave. The Dead Poets Society of America is seeking to rectify this situation, especially since Smith lived in Maine, New York, and South Carolina, and all three of the Crew here on the Dead Poets Grand Tour have family connections to these places. She bought land in Monson, Maine; Peter Wentworth is from there. She was born in North Yarmouth: Walter Skold was married there and attends church there with his 5 children (when they fly back to the nest for a visit). Alice the cinematographer extraordinaire has sweet connections to Charleston, SC, where Smith lived for awhile. Hunter the Famous Dead Poet Hunter was born in Brooklyn, and Smith lived there.
Off on the journey!
04/15/2010
03/26/2010
02/28/2010
11/30/2009
Seth Morgan : Sundown
The son of poet and editor, Frederick Morgan. Seth had a relationship, at first built on heroin, with Janis Joplin. Drugs helped to lead to an early death for Seth. Meditation at Sundown is in memory of Seth.
From the article "Seth Morgan's Last Ride," at the JanisJoplin.net site:
As a boy, Seth listened in as his father chatted philosophy and poetry with friends like e.e. cummings, Robert Lowell, and Dylan Thomas. Seth was a bright child with a genius for wordplay and a talent for trouble; he bounced a devil-may-care swath through elite private academies in New York (Saint Bernard’s), Connecticut (Hotchkiss), and Switzerland (The American School). Vocational training was not a high priority, thanks to his artistic bent but also to the trust fund that would supply, at the very least, his mad money-between $26,000 and $30,000 a year.
Seth was also blessed with good looks and lady-killer charm, which no doubt brought many high adventures his way. He commenced one such exploit in 1970 when he dropped out of Berkeley to move in with singer Janis Joplin, whom he had met while making a cocaine delivery to her Marin County home. Joplin was crazy about Seth, and even called City Hall to inquire about a marriage license. According to Buried Alive the 1973 biography of the singer by Myra Friedman, Joplin pleaded with Seth to force her to stop taking heroin, but he thought it was simply a play for more attention. “We might have married,” he wrote in a biography for his publisher, “were it not for her untimely check-out.”
..."On October 17, 1990, shortly after midnight, Seth Morgan and Suzy Levine approached the right lane of the bridge at about 40 miles per hour. He steered too far to the right and nicked the edge of the median strip. The bike shot up in the air.
Seth flew forty miles an hour face first into the piling with such force that he uprooted the eight telephone poles. Seth “stopped abruptly,” Sergeant Barrios explains, then rolled another 24 feet, coming to a halt in the roadway. His rider, Suzy, missed the piling and soared beyond Seth, landing 45 feet away from the point of impact in a fetal position. both died instantly.
An autopsy found that Seth had cocaine and Percodan in his blood and .3 percent alcohol - three times the legal limit. Suzy had .28 percent alcohol in her blood.
“If she’d been wearing a helmet, she might have lived,” says Officer Carmine Menchel, who visited the scene later. “If he’d been wearing one, he might have had an open casket.”
Paula Deitz Morgan : Epitaph
From an article, "A Continuing Conversation with a Poet" which appeared in the Sewanee Review 115.2 (2007) 290-292.
"Since our summer place is situated on an old quarry site, I insisted on Maine granite for Fred's headstone in lieu of the customary Vermont granite ordinarily employed in theregion. A young neighbor, using his tractor after a summer storm had loosened the earth, excavated from those same woods a block of smooth granite, the sides still rough and covered with green lichen. Since it was too massive for one headstone, I asked a local stonecutter to split it into two, leaving the other half for me.
So finally there is the matter of my own inscription, for it is not considered morbid inMaine to incise the stone in advance and leave the date open. Treasuring our years
together, the joy of conversation and his gift to me of the ongoing discoveries I would
make about his life and poetry, I turned inevitably to the last lines of his book Poems
for Paula, from "Envoi": "share now this simple dwelling-place / where
timeless, we speak face to face."
Frederick Morgan : Blue Hill, Maine
Originally uploaded by gravelight
Frederick Morgan was a poet and the founding editor of The Hudson Review. His wife, Paula, who is the current editor, maintains a website about her late husband.
10/23/2009
Map of Maine's Dead Poets
We are gravemapping the Burial Places of Maine's Dead Poets.
As we uncover more gravesites of Maine's Dead Poets we'll keep updating the map. The public is encouraged to photograph and film videos at the graves of deceased Maine poets and share those photos and videos at the Flickr online Collection of Maine Poets' Graves.
P.S. If you do map a poet's grave, please include driving directions and perhaps even a GPS coordinate. Thanks!
Recent Posts
- Michael Macklin : Obituary
- Anne Hazlewood-Brady 1925-2012
- Ted Enslin (1925-2011)
- Meet Emily Dickinson in Harpswell!
- Ruth Moore Days in Bass Harbor July 17-23
- Joy Harjo and Patricia Smith @ Space Gallery
- Emily Dickinson Out Loud! July 18th Brunswick
- Maine Poetry Out Loud Finals now Onlinie
- Are you an 811?
- "Burying Mother" [Poems&Graves]
