Celebrating the Dead Bards of the Dirigo State

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:

 

Ann Sophia Stephens (1810–1886)

Buried in Brooklyn

 

While in Portland, she and her husband co-founded, published and edited the Portland Magazine, a monthly literary periodical where some of her early work first appeared.^[3] The magazine was sold in 1837. They moved to New York where Ann took the job of editor to The Ladies Companion and where she could further her literary work. This was also the time she adopted the humorous pseudonym Jonathan Slick. Over the next few years she wrote over twenty-five serial novels plus short stories and poems for several well known periodicals which included Godey's Lady's Book and Graham's Magazine.^[6] She started her own magazine Mrs Stephens' Illustrated New Monthly in 1856, it was published by her husband.^[7] The magazine merged with Peterson's Magazine a few years later. Her first novel Fashion and famine was published in 1854.

The term "dime novel" originated with Stephens's Maleaska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter, printed in the first book in Beadle & Adams's Beadle’s Dime Novels series, dated June 9, 1860. The novel was a reprint of Stephens's earlier serial that appeared in the Ladies' Companion magazine in February, March, and April 1839. Later, the Grolier Club listed Maleaska as the most influential book of 1860.^[8] Some of her other work includes High Life in New York (1843), Alice Copley: A Tale of Queen Mary's Time (1844), The Diamond Necklace and Other Tale (1846), The Old Homestead (1855), The Rejected Wife (1863) and A Noble Woman (1871). (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_S._Stephens )

#283 Abbie Huston Evans

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

Maine Poetry Out Loud Finals now Onlinie

The 2011 Maine Poetry Out Loud Finals are now online, thanks to the Maine Arts Commission. I had the joy of being able to serve as a judge for the competition and can tell you these young people did a great job. Well worth listening to the poems.

 

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:

 

Night, By Lousie Bogan

Robert Farnsworth reads Night, by Louise Bogan, at the 1st stop on the Dead Poets Grand Tour 2010.

Richard Cory, By Edwin Arlington Robinson

The Consummation, By May Sarton

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.

Oct 7th Reading at Most Beautiful Places in Maine

You don't want to miss the October 7th unique event "Remembering Maine's Dead Poets"

We'll be reading poetry together at 5 community events at some of the MOST BEAUTIFUL locations in Maine. 

HARPSWELL: 6:15...NOBLEBORO: 9:15... CAMDEN:10:45....CASTINE:1:15...

BLUE HILL:2:50...MT. CADILLAC: 5:30 (There are rain locations for each event)

New Biography of Parson Fisher of Blue Hill

The folks at the Fisher House Journal have an interview with the author of a new biography of the amazing Mainer, Parson Jonathan Fisher.

On October 7th we'll be reading some of the poetry of Rev. Fisher in Blue Hill, as part of the Dead Poets Remembrance Day in Maine.

Sardine Extravaganza: Beautiful Day; Great Event

The historic Sardine Extravaganza that took place in Belfast last Saturday was a great success. Music and Dance all devoted to the tiny, mighty sardine and the workers who made a living in the now-defunct Maine industry.

In a week or so we'll be posting some video taken that day.

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.)

Sardine Songs Extravaganza: Belfast, 8-21

You won't want to miss the great all-day event of song, poetry, and praise for the Sardine, happening in Belfast on Saturday, August the 21st.

Check out the list of events, speakers, and songs at the Sardine Songs & Herring Hymns Blog

"Maine in Four Seasons" Belfast Poetry Reading 7-27

The Belfast Library is holding a special poetry reading on the 27th of July7 which will feature four poets from a new book titled “Maine in Four Seasons: 20 Poets Celebrate the Turning Year” (Down East Books) edited by Wesley McNair. Each of the participating poets has poems from a different season in the anthology and will read poetry about that season. Elizabeth Tibbetts will represent spring; Martin27 Stengesser, summer; Patricia Ranzoni, fall; and Kristen Lindquist, winter.

“Maine in Four Seasons” includes not only contemporary poets from around the state but a range of Maine’s earlier poets, from Longfellow to Robinson to Millay. The readers will sample some of the earlier work together with their own. The book’s illustrator, Jan Owen, will kick off the reading by showing some of her original work for the book and describing her creative process

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.

Eastern Cemetery Sign-Up : April 23rd 12:30 PM

You are invited to join Maine poet laureate, Betsy Sholl, and Portland laureate, Stephen Luttrell, along with Maine poets Robert Farnsworth, Martin Steingesser, Megan Grumbling, Ken Nye, Deena Weinstein, and Joyce Pye at the 3rd Maine Dead Poets Bash, this coming Friday, April 23rd, at Portland's Eastern Cemetery.

Besides the invited poets, if you want to read a poem you are welcome to, but there are 2 rules: 1). It must be one poem from one of Maine's past poets; and 2) You need to respond in a comment to this posting and put the name of the poet/poem you want to read. This will help us avoid duplication.

Longfellow, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Phillip Both, Robert Lowell, Louise Bogan, Robert Creeley, Elizabeth Bishop, and David Walker are already being read. 

The Map of Maine's Dead Poets has over 40 more poets to choose from.

In case of rain or snow we'll meet across the street at the North Star Cafe.

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. :)

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)

Poetry Out Loud : Go Mainahs!

The great Poetry Out Loud project is steaming up for another great year of poetry in all 50 States. In Maine, teachers and students can learn how to get involved, and go for the poet's gold at the rain of the endbow, at the Maine Arts Commission website. You can see information about past Maine winners too.

Elizabeth Bishop - The Map

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