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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
FOREST LAWN, by KAREN SWENSON Poet's Biography First Line: Like an amusement park, the cemetery grounds Last Line: Is death and reproduction. Subject(s): Cemeteries; Death; Imitation; Graveyards; Dead, The | |||
Like an amusement park, the cemetery grounds are divided into themes. Gardens of Memory, Babyland, Slumberland look out over the valley where palms punctuate the smog, standing on one leg like molting, Disney waterbirds. Turned to stone, Norman Rockwell kids snuggle each other in the Great Mausoleum on an overstuffed marble armchair, while in the main hall the curtain is pulled electronically to display da Vinci's Last Supper remade in stained glass. A recorded voice speaks to rows of folding chairs, to silence as, in the stillness, sun moves along marble thighs of Playboy nymphs in the nude who cavort and weep along the dim hallways of the dead. Under the vaulting mimicry of this Gothic attic, or outside among immigrations of Italian cypress, the American dead reside in subdivisions, their respectability established by cloned guardian angels - Michelangelo's David and The Little Mermaid in this park whose theme is death and reproduction. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A FRIEND KILLED IN THE WAR by ANTHONY HECHT FOR JAMES MERRILL: AN ADIEU by ANTHONY HECHT TARANTULA: OR THE DANCE OF DEATH by ANTHONY HECHT CHAMPS D?ÇÖHONNEUR by ERNEST HEMINGWAY NOTE TO REALITY by TONY HOAGLAND |
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