Dirigo Bards & Their Old Graveyards

Are you an 811?

Are you too and 811?

Original image @ The Graves of Maine's Dead Poets

Untidy Candles: Reflections on a Tombstone

Elizabeth Akers Allen's Grave

Tombstone art at the grave of Maine poetess, Elizabeth Akers Allen:

 

Historic Grand Tour Report Now Online

The initial report of the historic Dead Poets Grand Tour 2010 is now online.

It chronicles all the places visited and the names of the poets read. From the Report: 

"We started on Shakespeare’s birthday, in Portland, Maine, the 23^rd of April, and we ended with a bang 6,500 miles later at the first Boston Poetry Marathon, May 25th. During those 34 days, and with the cooperation of 13 current and former State Poets Laureate, we held a Dead Poets Bash in 19 different States and visited 43 cemeteries!

The Grand Tour map can be accessed at the top left corner of the Dead Poets Society of America blog:  http://deadpoets.typepad.com/dpsablog/  

The other readings and interviews we held at poets’ graves and houses were really great as well, including the Lorine Niedecker home, the Carl Sandburg home, the E.L. Masters home, the Sidney Lanier house, The Virginia Military Institute, The Poe Museum, the Longfellow House and the Woodberry Poetry Room, at Harvard.

All totaled we visited the graves of 75 American poets, and heard the amazing poetry of over 100 American poets read. Dedgar and the crew kept up a pace of just over 191.18 miles per day and 2 poets’ graves per day!

The initial report of the historic Dead Poets Grand Tour 2010 is now online.

It chronicles all the places visited and the names of the poets read. From the Report: 

"We started on Shakespeare’s birthday, in Portland, Maine, the 23^rd of April, and we ended with a bang 6,500 miles later at the first Boston Poetry Marathon, May 25th. During those 34 days, and with the cooperation of 13 current and former State Poets Laureate, we held a Dead Poets Bash in 19 different States and visited 43 cemeteries!

The Grand Tour map can be accessed at the top left corner of the Dead Poets Society of America blog:  http://deadpoets.typepad.com/dpsablog/  

The other readings and interviews we held at poets’ graves and houses were really great as well, including the Lorine Niedecker home, the Carl Sandburg home, the E.L. Masters home, the Sidney Lanier house, The Virginia Military Institute, The Poe Museum, the Longfellow House and the Woodberry Poetry Room, at Harvard.

All totaled we visited the graves of 75 American poets, and heard the amazing poetry of over 100 American poets read. Dedgar and the crew kept up a pace of just over 191.18 miles per day and 2 poets’ graves per day!

Paula Deitz Morgan : Epitaph

Paula Morgan
Originally uploaded on Flickr by WSS

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 in
Maine 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

Frederick Morgan
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.