Book Review: Next Door To The Dead by Kathleen Driskell

Cemetery poetry may be an odd concept for mainstay readers, but for those of us who are “tombstone tourists,” this genre offers a refreshing look into our clandestine indulgences and interests.

Next Door To The Dead is Kathleen Driskell’s latest book; one I found to be irresistible. It takes an understanding of the taboos associated with writing about death, along with true empathy and respect for those living and dead to write poems brimming with thoughtfulness, heartbreak and humor. Driskell introduces us to her “neighbors” in a very matter-of-fact way because after 20 years of living next door to the cemetery, they are indeed the neighbors she’s gotten to know.

Driskell does what many of us do, wanders the cemetery in search of solace, solitude, and stories that may or may not be true, but her offerings tug at our heartstrings just the same. The poem Infant Girl Smithfield leaves the reader aching to comfort a stillborn child while the waiting tension in What Haunts is something most of us have felt when viewing the desecration cemetery vandals have left behind.

We listen in to Tchaenhotep, an Egyptian mummy whose every-day existence was thwarted in death by an odd fame; she is now on display in a local museum.

In Lament for the Crow, Driskell bids us to pause beside her, considering the demise of a crow and the affect it has among his resident flock.

The author is an expert at unraveling the secrets and stories buried in the local graveyard, and by invoking the voices of the dead, she shares her personal folklore about them in prose that will return to haunt you as you meander through a graveyard.

Next Door To The Dead will entice those who have no interest in cemeteries to hesitantly tag along, and in the process, captivate their imaginations. Taphophiles will find the fact that Driscoll can put into words those thoughts we’ve all had while searching and reflecting in a quiet cemetery, extraordinary. And most tombstone tourists will agree, that is both enlightening, and enchanting.

~ Joy

About the Author:

Kathleen Driskell

Kathleen Driskell is associate editor of the Louisville Review and professor of creative writing at Spalding University, where she also helps direct the low-residency MFA in Writing program. She is the author of numerous books and collections, including Laughing Sickness and Seed across Snow.

Book Details:

Next Door To The Dead by Kathleen Driscoll

Published by University Press of Kentucky (2015)

In the Cemetery at the Winter Solstice

Yesterday heralded in the Winter Solstice – the first day of winter, the shortest day, and the longest night of the year.  It is a day celebrated all over the world in many different ways.

 

In ancient times, Winter Solstice festivals were the last celebrations held before the deep, hard winter began. There was plenty of food and wine, for now, – and hopes that all would survive the coming famine months until spring arrived again.

It seems only fitting that we spend a few moments at this time of year in quiet reflection in the cemetery.  As the snow falls silently around us, our thoughts turn to life and death, to the past and the future, to what we’ve lost and what we’ve gained.  These poems seem to sum up those sentiments especially well.

In Beechwood Cemetery

Here the dead sleep – the quiet dead.  No sound

Disturbs them ever, and no storm dismays.

Winter mid snow caresses the tired ground,

And the wind roars about the woodland ways.

Springtime and summer and red autumn pass,

With leaf and bloom and pipe of wind and bird,

And the old earth puts forth her tender grass,

By them unfelt, unheeded and unheard.

Our centuries to them are but as strokes

In the dim gaunt of some far-off chime.

Unaltering rest their perfect being cloaks 

A thing too vast to hear or feel or see Children of Silence and Eternity,

They know no season but the end of time.

                                    ~ Archibald Lampman

An Old Cemetery

The mists swirl, the moon shines bright.

No one dares stray here.

They would never desire to,

Unless the earth covers what they hold dear.

Bodies sleep subconsciously

In the presence of their God,

Singing silent songs that decompose,

Under the wild earth their restless souls trod.

The headstones stand pale and somber,

Reflecting the white aurora’s glow.

Memories play like broken records,

Trapped inside, echoing lethargic tones.

The world’s slow spin cradles them to sleep.

Heavy eyelids come to rise no more.

A thousand sunsets dwindle and pass

Lives that mortality ripped and tore.

                                    ~ Jana Rininger

This poem was written by a teenage author, only identified as swoopingpigeons from New York at http://www.teenink.com/poetry

Snow on Cemetery Stones

I watch as nature masks herself In flakes of snow that leap, from heights

They fall in endless tandem

Hiding her unveiled cruelty.

In winter’s months when all is bare,

No flowers to distract looking eyes,

We see the gravestones wearing away

And the remainder of unfinished good-byes,

We see nature’s curse and her destruction

In the words once legible.

‘Will’ who preferred ‘William’

Is now ‘Wil’ with one ‘L’ left alive.

And what of the rest of us

Who walk the world still,

Will she shroud our names in supposed beauty,

And leave all that we are

To become all that we once were.

                                    ~ swoopingpigeons

And one of my winter favorites!  Although not written about a cemetery, the woods also offer that forlorn feeling of the unexpected and the unfinished.

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

                           ~ Robert Frost

And now the season is at a close - Happy Holidays to you and yours!!

~ Joy