Monday, October 29, 2012

Dead Poets Remembrance Day - 2012


Part I

October 7th, the death-day of Edgar Allen Poe, is designated as Dead Poets Remembrance Day; events honoring dead poets are scheduled for a weekend falling near that date. This year's schedule was ambitious. And it was, just as it was for the last two years, my favorite weekend of the year. It's autumn. It's New England. It's cemetery-traipsing. It's poetry. It's great fellowship. It's learning. And now-- this being the third annual -- I can say it's tradition.

We started off at Hope Cemetery in Worcester, meeting at the grave of Elizabeth Bishop. Poems by poets born in Worcester (or who had an association with the city) were recited.




Dan Lewis reading Dennis Brutus

Carle Johnson reading Ethridge Knight
Me reading Frank O'Hara's great "The Day Lady Died"
Add caption



Part II

We proceeded from Hope Cemetery to the boyhood home of Stanley Kunitz.  It's not just a home but, to me, a shrine.  After some forty years of saying, if anyone asked, who my favorite poet was, I would speak the name of Sylvia Plath.  Then, a few years ago -- though my heart is generally faithful -- I had grown tired of Sylvia Plath, dumped her, and abruptly took up with Stanley Kunitz. (Allowing that, in many categories, to have a favorite is in the first place more-or-less silly.)

I wrote extensively in a blogpost on Oct. 11, 2011, about the earlier visit to the boyhood home so won't describe it here again.  Tours of the home, led by docents, are usually limited to about ten people; our tour overlapped the preceding one, making for a crowded house. I'll just say that though there were some 25-or-so pilgrims wandering about, the resident cat was unimpressed by our presence.


In the garden out back I harvested two leaves that had fallen from the sacred pear tree (see Kunitz's poem "My Mother's Pears"). Someone snapped a picture as I was carefully placing the leaves in my notebook. I tried to swipe the picture off the Worcester County Poetry Association website
http://wcpa.homestead.com but the resolution is crappy in the transfer; its rather like a bank robber who, having gotten away, discovers his take to be soaked in a tell-tale red dye; nevertheless, in this case, you can click on the link above and see a picture of me with my leafs as well as other pictures from this year's events.

Part III


Poster by Walter Skold

It was a seventy-five mile drive to get to the next event in Newburyport.  Since someone had neglected to show up with the key to Old South Church we sat in the sun's good warmth on the front steps. I was let to choose something from Jack Kerouac to read; I chose not any of his poems -- I'm not especially fond of them, and they're mostly haiku, which doesn't make for easy-to-make-sense recitation -- but chose rather the opening passage of The Town and the City, his first novel (and, in my opinion, his greatest accomplishment, though it brought in many fewer bucks than the sensational On the Road); in this passage the narrator is standing on a hill overlooking the city (obviously Kerouac's hometown of Lowell), from which vantage he can see and comment on a cemetery; it was a suitable fit to the occasion.


A Newburyport highlight was the recitation of a Spanish translation of Robert Frost's famous "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Rhina Espaillat, the translator. (My brother, having taught Spanish for decades, said it was excellent).

Newburyport readers Toni Treadway and Rhina Espaillat
K. Pedlar Bridges reading Johnathan Plummer, the mid-1800's
'pedlar' poet (as described by John Greenleaf Whittier).
Part IV

Dusk is about to settle in.  We drive to a Newburyport cemetery.  The "Dead Poet Guy" himself, Walter Skold, leads us to a particular grave and recites a particular poet. I'm sorry that I have forgotten which poet. But I remember the large bottle of Remy Martin (or was it Courvoisier?) cognac, from which Walter poured shots for all the attendees. My own portion went down warmly and smoothly, and made me long for the old days when Madame Cognac was one of my best friends, accompanying me on a vast number of wild outings.

The Dead Poet Guy reading in Oak Hill Cemetery, Newburyport
Part V

It was a less-than-half-hour drive from Newburyport to Ipswich where, at seven p.m., we gathered with others in the community room of First Church to honor the poetry-side of the renowned novelist John Updike. Three of his four children were among those who read Updike poems. We were welcomed by his first-born, Elizabeth, who was as cordial as could be, and to whom I was perhaps overly anxious to tell how much I love an obscure Updike story "The Leaves" published in The Music School, a collection of short stories. "Reading it taught me that prose can also be poetry," I gushed.

Once we were seated, it was fun hearing anecdotes about Updike from people who knew him as a father or as a fellow citizen of Ipswich.

Elizabeth, one of John Updike's two beautiful daughters,
reading one of her father's poems in Ipswich.


Part VI

My brother and I, exhausted from a day of cemeteries and poets, and with our stomachs sated (over-sated in my pig-trough style) by a decent meal at an Italian restaurant called Polcari's, were safely ensconced in a Woburn motel, and did not attend the midnight event of Dead Poets Remembrance Day held at Edgar Allan Poe Square in Boston.

I heard tell though that The Dead Poet Guy, along with a couple others, showed up at Edgar Allan Poe Square at midnight with cognac and a rose. From a bar a few doors down, three young drunks ("Irish, no doubt," my friend at work, who is of Italian descent, commented) stumbled out and shortly encountered this guy standing there with a rose and a bottle of cognac. He explained; they agreed to join in the toast to the man who wrote "The Raven." And then along came a Boston policeman. There was further, more-in-depth explaining to do. No arrests ensued.

Poe is buried in Baltimore. It is well-known that for something like 75 years an unidentified person (and then, following his death, purportedly, his "son") toasted the poet at his grave with cognac, leaving behind a rose (or, depending on the account, three roses) and the remainder of the cognac. (I've always imagined a mad dash by empty-pocketed alcoholics for that stash of cognac.) Inasmuch as this tradition suddenly stopped two or three years ago it is conjectured that "The Poe Toaster" is dead.

Because Poe was born in Boston, the city has set about honoring him, claiming him, with the Square, and soon there will be a life-sized statue of Edgar Allan Poe installed in Edgar Allan Poe Square. The Dead Poet Guy, among others, hopes to establish a midnight event in Boston honoring Poe on his deathday, October 7th.

Model of proposed Boston statue honoring Poe

Part VII

I also missed the Monday morning's events; after dropping my brother off at Logan Airport, thus having no co-pilot to help with directions, I couldn't face scrutinizing maps in order to find myself (or, more likely, not finding myself) at various sites in the towns of Beverly, Peabody, and Medford. (There was a GPS device in the glove compartment of my car, but, alas and alack, it would be another week before I learned how to use it.) Thus I missed especially a person named Cheryl Eagan-Donovan reciting some Sylvia Plath poetry at Lynch Park in Beverly. Instead, I headed for Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, knowing where it is; my morning there was written about in my previous post about Reggie Lewis.

Part VIII

From Forest Hills Cemetery I went to Cambridge; I parked and went to a place named Sofra which featured Lebanese, Greek, and Turkish foods. The place was jammed and tiny. I pointed to something, unable to pronounce it, and also ordered a latte. I carried my choices to an outside table and, in the warm sunshine, enjoyed my latte and whatever that something was.


The novel I was carrying in my knapsack, The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller, was my company at lunch, and is excellent. Not only is it a great story of Achilles and his male lover but it provided some charming information. I had forgotten that Achilles, the Greek hero of the Trojan War according to Homer's Iliad, was the son of a goddess named Thetis. Thetis believed that if she dipped her newborn son into the river Styx he would be immortal. So, holding Achilles by his heel, she did so. However, Achilles was eventually to die as a result of a wound to his heel -- the undipped place where his mother had held him was vulnerable, mortal. From that legend comes the term Achilles' heel, i.e. a point of weakness.


Part IX

I walked across the street to Mt. Auburn Cemetery and rejoined what was now a group of twenty or twenty-five participants in Dead Poets Remembrance Day. This outing was dedicated to "The Harvard Bards of the 20th Century at Mount Auburn." Our first stop was at the grave of Amy Lowell. A South Carolinian poet, Mary Hitchins Harris, presented an interesting précis of Lowell's biography. "God made me a business woman," Lowell once quipped, "and I made myself a poet." Ms. Harris recited Lowell's "Patterns," an anti-war poem that, sadly, a hundred years after it was written, remains relevant.

Susan Richmond, beautiful and poised, who is with the Robert Creeley Foundation located in the
small town of Acton, Mass., read a few Creeley poems, making me want to read all his poems.
Everyone knows the name of Buckminster Fuller, and probably associates it with the design of the geodesic dome; he did not design it -- that honor goes to a German, Walther Bauersfeld -- but Fuller admired the design, built a large one, and popularized the practicality and engineering genius of the structure. A nephew of Buckminster Fuller was in attendance. When asked if he could share any memories of his uncle he said, "I'll try to remember an Irish limerick Uncle Bucky taught me."


Now Jim O'Shea was cast away
Upon an Indian Isle.
The natives there they liked his hair,
They liked his Irish smile,
So made him chief Panjandrum,
The Nabob of them all.
They called him Jij-ji-boo Jhai,
And rigged him out so gay,
So he wrote to Dublin Bay,
To his sweetheart, just to say:

Sure, I've got rings on my fingers, bells on my toes,
Elephants to ride upon, my little Irish Rose;
So come to your Nabob, and next Patrick's Day,
Be Mistress Mumbo Jumbo Jij-ji-boo J. O'Shea.
Across the sea went Rose Magee
To see her Nabob grand.
He sat within his palanquin,
And when she kissed his hand,
He led her to his harem,
Where he had wives galore.
She started shedding a tear;
Said he, "Now have no fear,
I'm keeping these wives here
Just for ornament, my dear."


In emerald green he robed his queen,
To share with him his throne.
'Mid eastern charms and waving palms
They'd shamrocks, Irish grown,
Sent all the way from Dublin
To Nabob J. O'Shea
But in his palace so fine
Should Rose for Ireland pine,
With smiles her face will shine
When he murmurs, 'Sweetheart mine."



Buckminster Fuller grave; Mt. Auburn Cemetery

Oliver Kenison at grave of his uncle,  Buckminster Fuller

Enviably young, enviably composed, enviably stylish, enviably smart, enviably postured,
a woman from Brooklyn's Buckminster Fuller Institute delineates his genius.

After greeting The Dead Poet Guy on this day he had pulled me aside and said he needed a reader. He handed me two books of poems by one David McKay, someone I'd never heard of, though I should have; turns out he was very famous. I was so lucky as to open one of the books, see a poem titled "Sonnet" and loved it. I would be able to recite it with pleasure. Anxious that I might not read a fresh-to-me poem too well, I confessed to those gathered at McCord's grave, "I just ran across McKay about an hour ago, so this is sort of a cold reading, but I do it with a warm heart." It came out fine.



                             Sonnet                

This is the sonnet: fourteen lines for bones,
Sorrow for marrow, fleshed with life and death;
Small in the eye, biotic, out of breath,
Gray and mysterious in overtones.
Sunglass to Petrarch, a sonnet in the end
Held Milton's blindness, Shakespeare's tacit love,
Wordsworth's impinging world, Keats' star above
His lonliness.  One was Rossetti's friend.
All things to all: first light, convective dark;
Young to the old, old magic to the young;
A cloud, a sail, a mountain, and a mark
Against the moon, the singer and the sung.
A stroller and a player, what is more,
Doubling in brass at Auden's marvelous Door.

Later on the tour, walking beside The Dead Poet Guy, he thanked me for reading and gave me the book I'd read from -- a first edition in fine condition of A Star by Day, published in 1950 by Doubleday. I notice that the first owner signed his name and the date of acquisition inside the front cover: R.G. Dodge - Sept. 29, 1950. It's a treasure.

*
It took me way too long to get at this blogpost, and now I've gone on too long, and need to wrap it up, push the "publish" icon, and go on to other things (bags of trash to the Transfer Station, for starters, and then make a chicken soup) while always looking forward to the Fourth Annual Dead Poets Remembrance Day. But I can't wrap up this post without mentioning Walter Skold's recitation of a John Ciardi poem -- not in the crematory where Ciardi's ashes are stored, because it was getting late, and the crematory would be darkish -- but at the grave of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. (And -- will I never stop? -- the Ciardi poem he recited at the start of last year's event was one amazing poem; I hadn't even known Ciardi wrote poetry; I knew him only as a pre-eminent translator of Dante.)

Dead Poet Guy, Walter Skold, 

P.S. You can go to http://deadpoets.typepad.com and compliment Dead Poet Guy for his achievement of visiting and photographing his 250th grave of dead poets -- some the poets being so obscure that you wonder how he ever found out about them!

Friday, October 12, 2012

RIP: Reggie Lewis - Nov. 21, 1965 - July 27, 1993



Reggie Lewis
If you love Celtic basketball then you probably loved Reggie Lewis.  At Northeastern University he was so great that he is the only player in the school's history to have his jersey, number 35, retired; it hangs from the rafters of their arena. You thought, when he was picked by the Celtics in round one of 1987’s draft, that they had picked a great one who’d lead the team in bringing another few championship banners to town. He was a huge star. He would average 17.6 points per game. He would become the first player in Celtic history to have 100 rebounds, 100 assists, 100 steals, and 100 blocks in one season. And he was popular. He did a lot of work and donated a lot of money for children in rundown Boston neighborhoods. Boston loved Reggie Lewis.

And then, in a playoff game in May of 1993, Reggie Lewis collapsed. Extensive tests were performed; the results were reviewed by a panel of twelve cardiologists. Called the "dream team," they jointly concluded that Lewis had cardiomyopathy. A defibrillator might be necessary; his basketball career should end. Unable to accept this verdict, Lewis and his wife sought a thirteenth opinion. They found, at Brigham and Women's Hospital, a cardiologist named Gilbert Mudge who, after he examined Lewis, had great news:the Celtic star had only a relatively harmless fainting disorder. At a press conference Mudge announced: "Mr. Reggie Lewis will be able to return to professional basketball ... without limitation."

Almost exactly two months later, on July 27, Reggie, practicing off-season at the gymnasium of Brandeis University, collapsed again. Two campus policemen were on the scene quickly; both performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation efforts while awaiting an ambulance. Donna Lewis, Reggie's wife, rushed to a hospital in Waltham. Holding Reggie's hand she leaned to his ear and told him that everything was going to turn out okay. "Hang in there! Come on, wake up," she said. She was talking to a man who was already dead. On August 2, Larry Bird, Senator Kennedy, and some fifteen thousand other people lined up for his funeral.
***
When I was at Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain (adjacent to Boston) in 2007, I visited the graves of poets buried there. Later I remembered that it is also the final resting place of Reggie Lewis, and I wished I had visited his grave as well. This past Monday, having a morning to fill before joining the afternoon events of Dead Poets Remembrance Day at Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, I decided to return to Forest Hills and visit the grave of Reggie Lewis. Unfortunately, it being Columbus Day, the cemetery office was closed. Maps of the cemetery were available at the entrance, but Reggie Lewis was not on the list of distinguished people buried there.

I meandered around and around on the narrow curving roads of Forest Hill's two hundred and seventy five acres, hoping to maybe run across a maintenance worker who could tell me where Reggie Lewis is buried. I even took to stopping to ask the few pedestrians I encountered if they might know. At this I got lucky: a woman I asked,surprised that Reggie Lewis was buried here (and I was surprised that she, a matronly woman looking to be around sixty, would even know who Reggie Lewis was), whipped out her I-Pad, did some googling, and kindly informed me that Reggie Lewis's grave is unmarked, but that he lies beneath the ground facing the grave of one James O'Bryant on Dogwood Lane.

I found Dogwood on the map, drove to it, parked at the south end of it. Luckily, Dogwood Lane is not too long, and the plots are layed out in a more-than-less regimented fashion. I set off on the west side of Dogwood looking at every single stone in the series of hedged squares. Reaching the north end I crossed Dogwood and walked up and down among the rows of stones on the east side. Eventually, feeling a mite of despair, I saw that I was nearing the end. I had examined perhaps a thousand headstones and had not found the one I wanted to find. I consoled myself: the morning was sunny, warm, and blue-skied, and I love walking in cemeteries, and I've lived through many other disappointments in life; this is just another disappointment to pile on the pile of disappointments. No big deal. Then, within the very last hedge-lined square I had yet to walk in -- i.e. the square right next to my parked car -- and right before my eyes stood the marker of James O'Bryant. I photographed the plot across from it.

The Unmarked Grave

I couldn't help but wonder why his widow has not had a marker placed there; I considered that perhaps she had, and that ... like the graves of Sylvia Plath and James Dean ... it had been chiseled away at by avid souvenir-seeking fans -- believe me when I say that Boston loved Reggie Lewis -- until it was in no condition to remain standing.
***
Donna Lewis sued Doctor Gilbert Mudge (and three other doctors) for malpractice. As the trial played out, following some three years of dispositions and hearing, it was a daily front-page headline in both the Globe and the Herald. Donna Lewis was vilified by some as greedy; after all, it was said, she was already rich from her husband's life insurance and his Celtics contract. Never mind that rich might not feel that great when you've lost the man you love, the father of your two young children, lost a future of treasured companionship. Her courtroom ordeal ended in a mistrial. She sued again. She lost again.
***
At some point during all the dispositions and hearings a Globe reporter named Will McDonough asked a fellow reporter, Howard Manly, "Did you know that Reggie has no gravestone?" Manly did not believe this could be true. They drove out to Forest Hills. McDonough was right.

When, some time later, Donna Lewis was told that people wondered why there is no headstone, she said "I don't think that with all the stuff that has taken place, I don't think he's really at rest right now. Nothing about him passing from this earth has been right."

I can only guess that Donna Lewis, to this very day, is unable to think of her husband as being "at rest."

And I can only hope that he is.
***
Ephemera #1 - I read many articles on the Internet researching the facts of Reggie Lewis' life. In one, James O'Bryant's grave is described as being marked by a "huge mausoleum." Mr. O'Bryant was a distinguished man -- Northeastern University's African-American Institute is named for him -- but his grave marker is way more modest than a "huge mausoleum."


***
Ephemera #2 - One of the Brandeis University policemen who performed mouth-to-mouth resusitation efforts on Reggie Lewis was one James Crowley. Exactly eleven days short of ten years after this good deed, Crowley, now a member of the city of Cambridge's police force, gained national infamy after arresting the very distinguished and harmless Professor Henry Louis Gates at the professor's Cambridge home for disorderly conduct, after a misunderstanding about Gates being the resident of the home, not a black man burglarizing it. Crowley was accused of having been motivated by racial profiling; ironically he was considered such an expert on how to avoid racial profiling that he was an instructor for a regular class on the subject at a leading Massachusetts Police Academy.

Obama, Crowley, Gates, and Biden at the famous beer summit.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

RIP: Manuel V. Leite, 1965 - 1987


A spectacular chrome-plated memorial to a young man dead
at only 22.  Located in Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Mass.  I could
find no biographical data on him, but others with the same name came
from the Azores.



Tuesday, October 9, 2012

One for Joan ....

                    Two pear leafs found
                    on hallowed ground
                              one for Joan