Publication Date: April 4, 1999 | Series: Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry
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.
“[T]he technical skill and humor on display in this collection make it likely that Cecil’s poems will be read long after he joins that ever-longer roll call of poets who have passed on. . . . [A] remarkable book.”—Quarterly West
About the Author
Richard Cecil teaches in the Department of English and the Honors Division of Indiana University. He is the author of two previous books of poetry, Einstein's Brain and Alcatraz, which won the 1991 Verna Emery Poetry Competition.
Product Details
Paperback: 128 pages
Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press; 1st edition (April 4, 1999)
This review is from: In Search of the Great Dead (Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry) (Paperback)
I saw Richard Cecil give a poetry presentation last year at the SIU Law Auditorium, and I was definately impressed. I eventually bought this latest book of poems, and am even more impressed. I completely relate to his work. They are about everyday things, and are analyzed in a way that makes me think about my own life. Themes of death and other certain things in life are treated in a way that is both frighening and amusing. In my opinion, the best selection from the book is "Writers in Hell," where Mr. Cecil describes what the afterlife would be like for an overly proud author. I actually laughed out loud, and then read it again, which is a rare thing when I read poetry.
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