Celebrating the Dead Bards of the Dirigo State

Anne Hazlewood-Brady 1925-2012

From Anne Hazlewood-Brady Papers, 1958-2001, MWWC

Anne, a poet and a writer graduated from Vassar in 1946. In 1969 she joined the feminist movement in New York after raising five sons. As an active independent she co-founded the New York Women's Center in 1970. Later, as a member of the planning committee of the Strike for Equality she came up with the $1,000 for the Strike office and helped organize the march and other events and wrote the beautiful, "We Took to the Streets Like a River," which commemorates the Strike for Equality march. In 1971 she moved to Maine where she registered as a lobbyist for the ERA (which passed in ME in 1973). She attended the International Women's Year Conference in Mexico City in 1976 and was a delegate to the National Women's Conference in Houston in 1977.  

 

She is a founder of Maine Women in the Arts and was poetry editor of Maine Life from 1979 to 1985. The author of six books of poetry, she also wrote "Matriot/Patriot" for Catherine East.  

Pat Murphy: A Poet From My "Hometown"-- Freeport

Unfortunately, sometimes you learn about people you would have liked to have known after they are dead...In this case, the poet and bookstore owner, Preston L. "Pat" Murphy. Turns out he lived in Freeport just at the time I was launching the Dead Poets Society of America. He died just a week before our April 23rd, 2010 kick-off event of the Dead Poet's Grand Tour 2010, in Portland's Eastern Cemetery.

Funny too that I learned about my old, unknown neighbor, while searching for another famous dead Maine poet: John Neal. It was Cliff Gallant's column about Neal in the Portland Daily Sun that led me to e-mail Cliff, who in turn turned me in the direction of Poet Murphy. Hope to soon pay a visit to his grave in Portland's Brooklawn Memorial Park.

Funny too how I have bought volumes of poetry at YES Books for my Tombstone Art projects; most-lately, books by Jewish-American poet Peretz Kaminsky. Murphy used to run YES books...in fact, I am fairly certain I would have met him during some of my book-shopping forays in Portland during the last three decades.

Here is a remembrance from Strange Maine:

I miss going to yard sales in search of books only to find Pat there ahead of me, hauling off stacks of delicious art books and who-knows-what. I miss the Pat that was, and I hope that young Portlanders in years to come have another Pat to make friends with, in spite of whatever gruff exterior they encounter. Because with your books, you need a bookman, someone who makes a place in the world that you can wander through to make friends with the books before you take them home. 

Pat was many, many things in his life, but these are the things I remember him best for. Thank you, Darlene and Jon, for doing the best that you knew how.

Illustration: A favorite memory from the Danforth Street era of Yes Books: the bathroom toiletpaper dispenser with appropriately bookish and pop culture laden grafitti, recreated from memory.

Katharine O'Brien: Maine's Mathematician-Poet

I first heard of Katharine O'Brien a few weeks ago at the Charles Simic reading at USM, which was made possible by a gift from O'Brien's estate to the University. Part of the endowment was to make a lecture on poetry open to the public each year.

So, I looked her up and could not find much, so what to do? What any smart human would do: contact a librarian! And behold and lo, Cathleen Miller at the Maine Women Writers Collection found a file that says where O'Brien is buried. It's Amesbury, MA. Right near John Whittier. She might be number 318 on my journey.

Here is a shot of her poem "Einstein and the ice-cream cone", which was posted on the Maine Women Writers Collection Blog in 2011:

 

Herb Coursen

Herb Coursen Picture Set

 

#283 Abbie Huston Evans

Abbie Huston Evans is buried in Camden, under the mountain she and Edna Millay used to play under.

Bath-Born McDonald Clarke's Brooklyn Grave

McDonald Clark was born in Bath, Maine. Was buried in Brooklyn, and merited a poem by Walt Whitman

Michael Macklin : Obituary

(Portland Press Herald featured obituary)

(A Special Message from MWPA Board President, Sibyl Masquelier follows:)

It is with a heavy heart I inform MWPA members and friends of the death of MPWA board member and poet Michael Macklin.

This past weekend, Michael had once again chaperoned a posse of young writers from the Waynflete School
to attend the New England Young Writers Conference at the Bread Loaf campus of Middlebury College. On
Saturday night, Michael passed away unexpectedly in his sleep.

Michael Macklin was one of the most generous men I have ever met in my life. He has worked for years with
the Cafe Review. He worked tirelessly with young writers. His own accomplishments are so numerous I will
have to organize myself to present those at the 2012 Maine Literary Awards later this month.

As many of you know, I was disabled in an accident. No matter what, Michael would always wait for me after
board meetings and walk me to my car so I would not slip on the ice. At an MWPA writing retreat a couple
of year´s ago in East Boothbay, he had finished his duties and was ready to go home when I asked him to read
the only poem I ever wrote. The poem was based on the feeling I had of re-entering my ex-husband´s life when
I saw his disintegration from Alzheimer's. Michael sat with me for two hours that day, workshopping the poem,
allowing me to weep, making suggestions, and comforting me.

The project of Michael's that always made me smile was his efforts with poetry and the Portland Police
Department. Michael, Betsy Sholl, and several other Maine poets rode with and mentored Portland Police in
the craft of poetry as they went about their duties. The poets worked with the officers as they expressed
their feelings about dealing with victims, criminals, and the circumstances of their work. The published pieces
were some of the most poignant unabashed displays of talent and compassion Maine has seen.

It has been my pleasure to know and work with Michael for six years. Michael died doing what he loved:
helping young people to develop as writers.

We love you, Michael. You were an original. Our loss is great.

Sibyl

From Macbeth, Act 5 : Read by Ken Nye

Maine's Poets Remembered Well

The 1st celebration of Dead Poets Remembrance Day was a great day! Hurrah for all the poets who came out to read and remember the past poets of Maine.

Pictures and photos will be posted in coming weeks. All Maine-related Dead Poets Society of America activies will continue to be posted here, as the Remembering Maine's Island Poets blog was solely for that historic event.

Historic "Remembering Maine's Island Poets" Announced

On Thursday, October 7th, a day-long, 5-stop "Remembering Maine's Island Poets" series of community readings will take place up the coast of Maine, starting at sunrise in Harpswell and ending at sunset at Cadillac Mountain.

Visit our new blog for the event and check out the map of the route and the schedule of the 5 community readings that will highlight the lives and work of 36 Maine poets.

Participants are welcome to sign up to read a work from one of their favorite past poets of Maine poets by e-mailing maine (@) deadpoes {dot} org. Blog readers can make comments with suggestions for poems to be read that day (they all will have something to do with the "Islands" ie., fishing, shipbuilding, sailing, vacationing, the coast, storms, etc.)

Louis O. Coxe, Unsung Maine Poet

Thanks to a friend of his, I have been informed of another Maine poet, Louis O. Coxe, a former professor at Bowdoin College. His obituary in the NYT gives a brief outline of his life and work. Part of that reads:

Although he wrote criticism and several plays, Mr. Coxe was chiefly a poet in the anti-rhetorical tradition of Edwin Arlington Robinson. Honored as the 1977 Fellow of the Academy of American Poets, he was cited for his "long, powerful, quiet accomplishment, largely unrecognized, in lyric poetry."

Much of his work is characterized by sober reflection against a northern New England backdrop. The title work of the collection "The Wilderness and Other Poems" (1959) tells the story of an Indian expedition against an English settlement in Maine in the 18th century.

Ruth Moore Birthday Party on Wednesday

This Wednesday evening friends, family, and fans of poet and novelist Ruth Moore will gather at the Bass Harbor Memorial Island to celebrate her life and poetry. Moore was a long-time resident of Mt. Desert Island and was born on nearbye Gott's Island.

Obama left too early; this, and the Sardine event on Tuesday, are the Maine events of the week!

Ruth Moore Days and Sardine Songs

This Tuesday night there will be a special program at the Bass Harbor Memorial Library, which is part of the Ruth Moore Days festivities in that area. The local paper says:

There will be a presentation called "Sardines, Herring and Weirs". Publisher Gary Lawless will discuss Eleanor Mayo's sardine plant photos and read Moore's related ballads, poems and prose. 7 p.m. at the library

The event is part of the summer-long Sardine Songs and Sardine Hymns events, the complete schedule of which is online. The organizers say, of these unique cultural events:

We want to spend the summer celebrating the herring, yes the sardines, the little silver darlings, but we also want to celebrate the human cultures which grew up around the sardine fisheries. We want to spawn and promote a number of events around the state centering on the sardine, and the disappearance of the sardine related industry and culture, another kind of extinction.Please join us, and keep watching here as we will have more events to post.

A "new" dead poet: Samuel French Morse

While looking through the tremendous book, "Maine Lines," I came across a poet named Samuel French Morse. I had never heard of him before, and with a little research have come to see that he was a wonderful poet. I shall now look for his books in used bookstores.

He summered in Hancock, Maine, so he is the newest of Maine's dead poets to be placed on our map, though I was not able to find where exactly he was buried. He was born in the city of witches, the city of peace, in MA.

I found a nice memoir about him online, written by one of his former students.

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!

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!

Dead Poets Grand Tour To Start From Portland!

On April 23rd the Dead Poets Grand Tour 2010 will kick-off a 34-day, 21-state trip from Portland, Maine. Once again, Maine leads the nation!

Along the way 13 State Poets Laureate will be meeting the Tour and holding public readings, where we'll announce some very exciting news about a new national literary holiday.

Come join Maine laureate, Betsy Sholl, Portland laureate, Steve Luttrell, Martin Steingesser, Ken Nye, Megan Grumbling, and other poets as they read from Maine's past poets. The meeting place is going to be Eastern Cemetery, at 12:30 PM, with a rain location just across the street at the North Star Cafe.

You can see the interactive map of the route with the dates of the stops in all 22 States.

If you have the time, please support the North Star Cafe by having lunch or a snack after the reading. :)

Calling All Dead Poets of Maine

Calling all dead Maine poets: We are looking for you! If you are in any way able, please help one of your fans to find your gravesite so we can remember you and add you to our Pantheon of Dead Maine Poets.

For those entrepid gravehoppers and literary journalists who would like to help us document these poets' graves, please see our List of the Lost Dead Poets of Maine, where you will find the names of poets whose gravesites still need photographic documentation.

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)

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.

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!