Dirigo Bards & Their Old Graveyards

Elizabeth Akers Allen's Grave

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

 

Congratulations to Wesley McNair: New Maine Poet Laureate

Last night at the amazing Poetry Out Loud Maine State finals, Governor Paul LePage's daughter announced that Wesley McNair is the new Poet Laureate of Maine. I had the privilege of serving as a fellow judge with Wes at the competition (video from Lewiston Sun Journal)

Way to go Wesley!

Charles Wilbert Snow

Charles Wilbert Snow: at night
Originally uploaded by gravelight

Wilbert Snow's grave has as stanza from the very moving poem "And Must I Say Farewell."

Another well-known poem of his is

Conflict
The sea is forever quivering;
The shore is forever still.
And the boy who is born in a seacoast town
Is born with a dual will:
The sand and the rocks and the beeches
Inveigle him to stay,
While every wave that breaches
Is a nudge to be up and away.
(Wilbert Snow)

Seth Morgan : Sundown

Seth Morgan
Originally uploaded by gravelight

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.”

Elizabeth Bishop - The Map

Elizabeth Bishop - The Map
Originally uploaded on Flickr by Vicki H.

Henceforth From the Mind

Henceforth From the Mind
Originally uploaded on Flickr by meletarte