Dead Poets Society of America

Dead Henry Timrod: Back in Bob

Tombstone Art Collection. (c) Walter Skold

Posted February, 21, 2013. Taken at the grave of Henry Timrod, Columbia SC.

TRUTH : JUSTICE : NATURE : SCIENCE (and a dead, dead poet)

Tombstone Art Collection. (c) Walter Skold

At the grave of John Joyce, in Alexandria, Virginia.

 

Dr. Death #1 : James Matthews

Tombstone Art Collection. Photo by Walter Skold.

At the grave of Indiana poet-doctor James Matthews. Indiana

#255 Alice Freeman Palmer

December 10th visit, in 2012, with my good friend Elizabeth Giele, who took the picture in the darkish but lovely sanctuary.

Tombstone Art Collection: Countee Cullen: Dead Men Walk'n #1

Countee Cullen : Dead Men Walk'n #1 

Longfellow Makes #251

Hooray Hooray Hip Hip....my friend Elizabeth and I visited the forlorn grave of Samuel Longfellow Thursday morning in Portland. I read a poem "Love" and we wandered happy as a cloud throughout the lonely graves.

AP: Dead Poets Founder Halfway to Goal of 500 Graves

Posted: Oct 04, 2012 5:04 AM EDT Updated: Oct 04, 2012 5:04 AM EDT

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - The founder of the Dead Poets Society of America is halfway to his goal of visiting the gravesites of 500 bards.

Walter Skold on Thursday is visiting the gravesite of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's brother Samuel at Portland's Western Cemetery. Skold says Samuel Longfellow was a hymn writer, pastor and poet.

It'll be his 251st burial plot visit, marking the kickoff of events leading to Dead Poets Remembrance Day on Oct. 7.

Skold, who's from Freeport, Maine, pushed for a national holiday after he discovered that the graves of many of the nation's literary forebears have been neglected.

Highlights this year will include a tribute to the poetry of John Updike and a special midnight reading of "The Raven" at Poe Corner in Boston, Edgar Allan Poe's hometown.

Alan Dugan...#251....??

Just when I almost reach 250, and should stop already and collate my research....I keep finding new poet's graves in New England that would be easy to visit! Brooklyn-born Alan Dugan is one, buried out near Stanley Kunitz, in Truro. Notice that mystical 4-letter word on his grave...

22 Unknown or Forgotten Dead Poets of Mass

How many of these dead poets to YOU know? They are half of the 44 that will be celebrated on the 3rd annual Dead Poets Remembrance Day this October 7th and 8th.

Dennis Brutus - Elise Asher- Harriet Elizabeth Spofford - Charles Sprague - Elizabeth Stuart Phelps  - Clarence Manning Falt -Marsden Hartley - Rev. Timothy Flint - George Edward Woodberry - Alfonzo Lewis  - Enoch Mudge - Joseph Nye - Antoinette Purinton - Gamaliel Bradford VI  - William Alfred - Buckminster Fuller - Christopher Cranch - Thomas Higginson - John Pierpont, Sr.  -James Freeman Clarke - Amos Niven Wilder - Walter Beckman Pedersen

The Dead Preside

Paris Review online, by Brian Gittis: A few months ago, the first poetry reading I ever attended in New York came back to haunt me, almost literally. I was folding laundry on a Sunday night, listening to iTunes on shuffle, when a ghostly, familiar voice issued out of my speakers, interrupting the music. Soft, deeply resonant, and a little like Boris Karloff...

I couldn’t have told you then what was so powerful about his poems, but I’ve since had years to think about them—so here’s a quick example. Despite their small canvases (often between four and ten very short lines), Menashe’s poems hold an uncanny amount of space. For instance, “Old Mirror,” which was among the first poems of the night:

In this glass oval
As love’s own lake
I face myself, your son
Who looks like you—
Once we were two