Poets' Graves

June 25, 2007 9:36 PM

Poets' Graves. An international collection of.....wait for it.....poets' graves. Fascinating bios, a forum and a nice selection of classic poetry.
posted by mediareport (14 comments total)

They don't say it, but that last one is an excerpt from Pope's wonderful Essay on Criticism.
posted by mediareport at 9:37 PM on June 25, 2007

A Dead Poets' Society.

Robert Creeley's grave is poignantly simple.

Some poets' graves I'd like to visit, Shakespeare's, Emily Dickinson's, Walt Whitman's, e.e. cummings'.

Would love to pay homage to Edward Lear at his grave in San Remo but will psychically send nonsense flowers and unspoken limericks in my stead.

My great uncle, poet Yvor Winters, is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, LA. His wife, poet Janet Lewis, was cremated in Palo Alto.

Poet rebels, Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison are buried in the amazing Père-Lachaise Cemetery.
posted by nickyskye at 10:38 PM on June 25, 2007

Here lies one whose name was writ in water.
posted by kid ichorous at 11:00 PM on June 25, 2007

I would never call Jim Morrison a poet, but I did visit his grave in Paris, or what remained of it. Mostly just a small cube of concrete littered about with cigarettes & empty bottles of spirits.

Wilde's grave at the time was covered with Smiths-related graffiti, which was kinda sad. It seems to have been cleaned up, but I see that they never bothered to replace the angel's penis, which had apparently been souvenired by somebody.
posted by UbuRoivas at 11:25 PM on June 25, 2007

Nice.
posted by seanyboy at 11:58 PM on June 25, 2007

Also, I'm a bit disappointed with e. e. cummings grave.

i expected
        at least
     a lowercasering

  of the name.
posted by seanyboy at 12:00 AM on June 26, 2007

Ubu, Wouldn't have ordinarily put Morrison or Wilde in the poets category, but when I Wikipediaed Père-Lachaise, to include here, they were listed as poets and surprisingly the only ones I knew. Expected more dead poets there.

Sad to hear about Wilde's grave. aww, the dismembered naked male statue. What is "Smiths-related graffiti"?
posted by nickyskye at 6:45 AM on June 26, 2007

seanyboy, good point about e.e. cummings. Dang those caps are irreverent.

Maybe the gravestone chiseler preferred not to do curvy and delicate lower case? Seems like he was buried in a family plot. Wonder if his family honored his innovative work? It must be somebody's anecdote somewhere, why his gravestone is not in lower case.

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posted by nickyskye at 7:39 AM on June 26, 2007

Rupert Brooke is buried in Greece? Huh. Neat site. Might benefit from linking to Google Maps, though, especially in the UK.
posted by steef at 7:53 AM on June 26, 2007

Not to blow your minds, but E. E. Cummings never lowercased his own name when publishing his work. A few editors did, however, and that's why some people think of him as "e. e. cummings". Either that, or they have tiny minds that cant reach the shift key.
posted by crookedneighbor at 9:44 AM on June 26, 2007

Or the apostrophe, apparently.
posted by crookedneighbor at 9:44 AM on June 26, 2007

What is "Smiths-related graffiti"?

Graffiti related to the great 80s band The Smiths. Interestingly, the page for Elizabeth Smart notes that Smiths singer Morrisey "used many lines" from her famous poem Grand Central Station in songs like Reel Around the Fountain, Shakespeare's Sister, London and Louder than Bombs.
posted by mediareport at 7:01 PM on June 26, 2007

Yes. The singer / lyricist of The Smiths, Morrissey, was a huge Oscar Wilde fan, and the band itself had a very devoted following, so it happened that the fans channelled their love for Morrissey onto his love for his idol, which ended up with them scrawling his lyrics on Oscar's grave.
posted by UbuRoivas at 8:23 PM on June 26, 2007

Not to blow your minds, but E. E. Cummings never lowercased his own name when publishing his work.

Didn't know that. Thanks.
posted by nickyskye at 9:17 PM on June 26, 2007