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In Search of the Great Dead
With grim humor and humorous grimness, In Search of the Great Dead engages the great themes of poetry: death and fame.
The title poem of this collection records Richard Cecil's quest for the tombs of the famous dead. At first the search leads him on a tour of famous European tombstones—the grave of Chateaubriand in St. Malo, the shared tomb of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Pere-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, Yeats's old Celtic cross in Sligo—but gradually it expands into areas where all the tombs have been erased by time or vandalism—the tombs of Seneca and Lucan, and all of the great dead poets whose names have been lost. These once famous, now unknown poets lead Cecil to consider those graveyards full of anonymous dead—the civil war soldiers buried under tiny stones with numbers instead of names inscribed on them. Are they more anonymous than the once famous, now forgotten "great" dead?
Though Cecil is wryly aware of his own obscurity, his poems are strangely optimistic and life-affirming. His reply to Emily Dickinson's question: "I'm Nobody—are you / Nobody, too?" is an enthusiastic yes! In Search of the Great Dead conveys the joy of being Nobody and the shy, almost buried hope that someday (after death), he might become Somebody.
The title poem of this collection records Richard Cecil's quest for the tombs of the famous dead. At first the search leads him on a tour of famous European tombstones—the grave of Chateaubriand in St. Malo, the shared tomb of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Pere-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, Yeats's old Celtic cross in Sligo—but gradually it expands into areas where all the tombs have been erased by time or vandalism—the tombs of Seneca and Lucan, and all of the great dead poets whose names have been lost. These once famous, now unknown poets lead Cecil to consider those graveyards full of anonymous dead—the civil war soldiers buried under tiny stones with numbers instead of names inscribed on them. Are they more anonymous than the once famous, now forgotten "great" dead?
Though Cecil is wryly aware of his own obscurity, his poems are strangely optimistic and life-affirming. His reply to Emily Dickinson's question: "I'm Nobody—are you / Nobody, too?" is an enthusiastic yes! In Search of the Great Dead conveys the joy of being Nobody and the shy, almost buried hope that someday (after death), he might become Somebody.
- GenresPoetry
128 pages, Paperback
First published April 4, 1999
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 21, 2020
I've mentioned in previous poetry reviews how difficult it is for me to review books of poems. I just know what I like and what kind of poetry moves me. I feel like I can say with Emily Dickinson: “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.” If the poems make me feel a certain way when I read them, then I know that they are good.
For even the greatest dead,
if death isn't just dirt in the mouth,
must moan with their reedy voices
for the life they lost to be famous.
Richard Cecil's poetry is full of ghosts--the ghosts of the great literary dead lying in their graves in the title poem to his own ghost flitting through his dreams to the ghosts of words just written and lost when a power outage erases his laptop screen before they could be saved. His book is a search for the precious things and people who have been abandoned or lost through the years. Deeply moving and eloquent, thoughtful and intelligent.
First posted on my blog My Reader's Block.
For even the greatest dead,
if death isn't just dirt in the mouth,
must moan with their reedy voices
for the life they lost to be famous.
Richard Cecil's poetry is full of ghosts--the ghosts of the great literary dead lying in their graves in the title poem to his own ghost flitting through his dreams to the ghosts of words just written and lost when a power outage erases his laptop screen before they could be saved. His book is a search for the precious things and people who have been abandoned or lost through the years. Deeply moving and eloquent, thoughtful and intelligent.
First posted on my blog My Reader's Block.
Displaying 1 of 1 review