May 08, 2004
poetry
The other day I searched for the grave of a famous poet right here in Logan, Utah. Although I was wearing flip-flops and a casual, cotton skirt, I felt solemn. The hunt was purely spur of the moment, something I had been meaning to do for quite some time. I have been working as a research assistant for the May Swenson Symposium coming up in a couple weeks, although I haven't done much for it, except try to contact other poets. I'll be making a map for conference-goers, one that includes May's grave, as well as her childhood home. I figured I better figure out where it was, so after work, I walked to my car, which happened to be right by the Logan Cemetery.
It's a large cemetery, an old one, full of headstones, memorials, and statues. Some graves are surrounded by fences, short wrought-iron ones with intricate scrollwork. The type of thing you'd see on a widow's walk - how appropriate. I decided at first, to drive around and just look for benches. (I knew May Swenson's grave was a bench. It had some of her poetry engraved on it.) I turned off the radio because there were people there visiting graves. I thought Of Montreal might not be the most appropriate. Although, they sometimes talk about old people. Then I had to roll up my windows because sprinklers were furiously spraying the gravel road I was driving. I guess I could've turned Of Montreal back on, but by this time, I felt solemn. I loved the way the sprinklers washed over my car, like a storm in the middle of May. Although I slowed at each bench, I couldn't find the one with poetry written on it. Well, there were things like David and Gina, Families are Forever, which is a type of poetry, I guess.
I parked my car next to a statue of a melancholy woman because I recognized her and felt her despair matched my own feelings of searching for poetry. Then I started north, continuing to look for a bench. I would see one off in the distance and veer towards it, but it wasn't the right one. I covered four quadrants this way, again feeling the contrast of the warmth of the wind, the blossoms, the whirling plastic in rainbow colors stuck near other headstones.
I have always loved cemeteries and found comfort in them. One time, as a dramatic high-schooler, I left school early to visit the Salt Lake City Cemetery, burial ground of prophets and jews. While attending the University of Utah, I would ditch out on Greek Art and Archaeology for an afternoon roaming through headstones, searching out the names of people I had never known. And while serving as a missionary, my companion and I would call visiting cemeteries doing family history work. Something about only seeing a name and a date, the opportunity to imagine a whole life based on about twenty-four characters, made me feel amazingly and fantastically insignificant.
I finally returned to my car by the weeping widow who cries real tears, so I found out later. I decided to come back another day and began to retrace my path back to the gates. I still looked at benches and then without really thinking, I saw it. May Swenson's grave. I knew the poem from which the epigraph was taken - had studied it, loved it. But engraved on the bench in white letters, it seemed different. I didn't like seeing it taken out of context. And then on the top of the bench, words from another poem (poets are full of words), and as I looked at each angle, the back of the bench had another sentence, one that I had seen on postcards, posters, and brochures advertising the symposium. "I have an inventive mind. It's there for you to discover. Read me. Read my mind." Or something like that. Too many words. The bench was covered, as if there was not one final statement, but an indecision by family members as to which of her words to include.
I want my poetry to simply be my name and dates of birth and death.
Posted by kea at May 8, 2004 08:17 PM