Full Description
"Ghosts appear in place of whatever a given people will not face" (p. 65) The poems in Gravesend explore ghosts as instances of collective grief and guilt, as cultural constructs evolved to elide or to absorb a given society's actions, as well as, at times, to fill the gaps between such actions and the desires and intentions of its individual citizens. Tracing the changing nature of the ghostly in the western world from antiquity to today, the collection focuses particularly on the ghosts created by the European expansion of the 16th through 20th centuries, using the town of Gravesend, the seaport at the mouth of the Thames through which countless emigrants passed, as an emblem of theambiguous threshold between one life and another, in all the many meanings of that phrase.
Contents
One: Have you ever seen a ghost? Echo Body If Sometimes the Ghost Etymology A Ghost He Who Was Varieties of Ghost Ajar The Ghost Is in Itself The End of Antiquity According to Scripture More Miracula Going Home The Hellequin's Hunt Who Only Living The Gesta The Ghost Story History What Ghosts Interview Series 1 Walking Through A Face Toward the End The Beginnings of the Modern Era Fairy Tale Two: How did Gravesend get its name? Ghost Stories A Good Friend Miss Jeromette and the Clergyman Some Paintings of Ghosts Some Ghosts in Paintings Gravesend Gravesend Gravesend Interview Series 2 Pocahontas (1595, Powhatan Confederacy--1616, Gravesend, England) The Ghost Dance The Name Engraved Kent Three: What do you think a ghost is? Cicatrice Ghosts in the Sun Whole Ghost Traveling Ghost Crowds And Are Ghosts Interview Series 3 Old Wives' Tales Freud Claims Some Chinese Ghosts Across Ghosts Who Did After This Death There Will Be No Other Haint Blue One No How a Ghost Might Age Who Walked The Ghost Orchid Acknowledgments Notes
