The Graves of Southern Poets Grand Tour 2015

Complete Pictures Now Online

Pictures from all the graves visited on the Graves of Southern Poets Grand Tour are now viewable online at our Flickr Collection. The last blog was grave #483, but there are new pictures going up to grave #530!

#483: Karle Wilson Baker

Karle Wilson Baker

#479: Hubert Creekmore

Hubert Creekmore was a Classics scholar and translator. His grave is in Jackson, Mississippi. Circled what I thought was a funny passage:

#478: The Amazing Margaret Walker

I had a fabulous time at the grave of the amazing African-American poet, Margaret Walker.

#477: Turner Cassity

Turner Cassity's grave was very difficult to find for some reason! Maybe I needed the exercise in the 99-degree heat?

#476: Everette Maddox Buried in a Bar

Everette Maddox is buried in the back courtyard of the Maple Leaf Bar, where he spent many drunken days and nights writing his poems on napkins.

#475: Poet & Painter Stan Rice

The large mausoleum of Poet and Painter, Stan Rice, in New Orleans, has several of his poems written on the side:

#473: Celebrating Eugene Walter in Mobile

What a fine, fun, fantastic day was had in Mobile, Alabama, as Sue Walker and literary friends organized a reading and celebration at the grave of Eugene Walter.

 

#472: Ernest Abner Hartsock

Atlanta, Georgia. Ernest Abner Hartsock has a marvelous poem on his gravestone:

#471: Welborn Victor Jenkins

There is no marker at the grave of Welborn Victor Jenkins, in Atlanta.

#470: Thomas Jefferson Flanagan

Thomas Jefferson Flanagan

#469: Albery Allson Whitman

Albery Whitman was an African-American pastor and poet whose remarkable work is today largely unknown:

#468 : GA PL Frank Stanton

Frank Stanton was Georgia's first Poet Laureate. Pretty cool epitaph on his grave, which is in Atlanta.

 

#454: PL Arthur Abernathy

NC PL Arthur Talmadge Abernathy

#453: NC Poet Laureate & Printer: James Pearson

NC Poet Laureate, James Pearson, was also a fine printer:

The Disappearing Act of James McGirt

The Disappearing Act of James McGirt: 

Randall Jarrell's Grave in Greensboro

Dedgar and I visited Randall Jarrell's grave in Greensboro. Our first time there was in 2009, where this video was taken.

#452 : Gov. Thomas Burke

Celebrate Dead Poets Remembrance Day

Dead Poets Remembrance Day, the national literary holiday dedicated to remembering our past poets, is meant to be a celebration of people in local communities who honor the poetic gift that lived in regional or national poets.

-- Meet at a poet's grave;

--Meet in a bookstore or library;

--Make the holiday part of an already-scheduled poetry reading or literary event;

As former Kansas Poet Laureate, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg said: "Long Live our Dead Poets!" 

Past DPRD events have been planned in conjunction with poetry associations and groups of like-minded individuals.

North Carolina Poets' Graves Set

Have started a set of photos from the poets' graves in North Carolina that I am visiting this week. Can't wait to visit Black Mountain Museum and then Carl Sandburg's home! Loving North Carolina.

#451 - We Dug Up a Winner!

We dug up the forgotten grave of the little-known (but then-loved) Louisburg, NC poet and novelist, Edwin Wiley Fuller. What a great story this will be for the book.  

  

#450: Paul Green, Playwright & Poet

#449: Thaddeus Garland Stem

Epitaphic! "First Woman Named to be Poet Laureate of Virginia"

Ruby Altizer Roberts: #448

    

#447: VA Laureate Leigh Buckner Hanes

Mr. Hanes was born in Roanoke and was buried there. In 1949 he was appointed the Poet Laureate of Virginia. The Virginia Quarterly has two of his poems. Raven and I had a delightful Sunday morning filming and reading his poetry at his family grave.

  

#443: VA Laureate Carter Warner Wormeley

#444: Rev. John Bannister Tabb

John Bannister Tabb's burial card at famous Hollywood Cemetery.

 

#446: William Gordon McCabe

McCabe is buried in Petersburg. Is he yet another triply-dead Southern Confederate Poet?

#445 : John R. Thompson

Awesome little detective story for my book on how I was doing cultural DNA work -- digging around in the dusty pages of an old Confederate poetry book -- and came upon a hint that yet another poet was buried in Hollywood -- and indeed! John R. Thompson is buried almost within whispering distance on a quiet night from John Bannister Tabb! 

National AP News Story on Southern Grand Tour

(This national AP story by David Sharp was in over 100 papers last week - and has already led to 3 new poets' graves!) Roanoke Times — A former teacher who travels the country to document the final resting places of poets is looking forward to calling attention to African-American poets on a tour of the South and elsewhere.

Black poets have been writing about injustice and hardship since the days of slavery, and the theme rings true today, given the recent unrest surrounding police killings of black men, Walter Skold said.

"African-American poets have been going through the same turmoil. They've been right there. They've chronicled the great sorrows and successes that African-Americans have had," he said.

Fifteen African-American poets include Albery Whitman, who was born a slave, spoke out against the treatment of the Seminoles in Florida and was dubbed the "poet laureate of the Negro race." He's buried in Atlanta. Others include Arna Bontemps, a Louisiana-born poet who was part of the Harlem Renaissance and is buried in Nashville, Tennessee; Robert Charles Benjamin, who's buried in Lexington, Kentucky, where he was shot in 1900 while trying to get blacks to register to vote; and Melvin Tolson, Liberia's poet laureate, buried in Guthrie, Oklahoma. (read more at Press Page)