Dead Poets Society of America Pays Tribute to Kentucky’s Poets

A poet and photographer from Maine has reached Kentucky on a 65-day pilgrimage to record the grave sites of over 90 American poets.

Walter Skold, who founded the Dead Poets Society of America, has filmed 8 State Poet Laureates and numerous other poets reading the poems of deceased poets which relate to death, cemeteries, or elegies.

At each grave – and he has visited 77 in the last 48 days – he also takes interpretive pictures of collages assembled at the tombstone, something he calls Tombstone Art.

He has already visited the graves of four famous Kentucky poets, Madison Cawein,Father Louis Merton, Allen Tate, and Theodore O’Hara, and he plans to visit the graves of Hollis Summers, Jr., James Baker Hall, Jesse Hilton Stuart and Robert  Penn Warren before the historical journey is finished on August 16th.

“In my incredible experiences meeting poetry lovers while driving through 23 States I have discovered two main things about the our dead poets,” said Skold, who has degrees in history, journalism, and library science.

“For those poets who are remembered by those who love their work, they have a  kind-of second afterlife,” he says. “There are descendants or fellow poets who work to keep alive the legacy of their lives and of their poetry.”

This is especially true on a local or regional level, he finds, where poets who may not be known among East Coast intellectuals are cherished by the communities they lived and worked in.

“Other dead poets are doubly dead,” said Skold. “Even if their work was widely loved in life, it has now disappeared from anthologies, textbooks, and most-sadly, the hearts of people.”

In the first case Skold is discovering that our dead poets are indeed national treasures, but in too many cases, he feels, a part of our cultural body has died and been buried as well, just like the forgotten poets.

In Kentucky, Skold has placed Madison Cawein, a poet who used to be called the “Keats of Kentucky” in the second category.

“I tell people I am digging up dead poets one grave at a time,” explains Skold, who plans on making a documentary film of his journey.

“I visited the poetry experts at the Library of Congress and they told me that nothing like this has been done in American literary history,” said Skold.

“The more I travel and meet people who love the poetry and legacy of our dead poets, the more excited I get about this project,” he says. “The project has taken on a personal importance for me, as a poet, as people are so thrilled that
someone is taking interest in the poets they love.”

At the end of his tour in two weeks he will visit the grave of the famous Kentucky poet, Robert Penn Warren, who is buried in Vermont, not far from Robert Frost.
Click HERE for more information about this fascinating journey.

For more information about Jesse Stuart, as well as the opportunity to buy his books, visit the Jesse Stuart Foundation.

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