Title: "Ghost Writers"
Basis: A scavenger-hunt styled game in which the players learn about certain writers/composers found in the Beverly, MA Central Cemetery. The player will have to hunt for a flower/series of flowers with information about said writer/composer and be able to find, pick up/drop at the graves.
Below I have included some information from www.poetryfoundation.org's website about one of the poets that will be in our game.
GHOST:
Lucy Larcom
Poet Details
1824–1893
Poet, abolitionist, and teacher Lucy Larcom was born in 1824 in Beverly, Massachusetts. Larcom’s father, a sea captain, died when she was young, and her mother moved the family to Lowell, where she ran a boarding house. Larcom began working in the Lowell textile mills with her sisters when she was just eleven years old. During this time, her poems and stories began appearing in periodicals such as the Lowell Offering, and she first met the poet John Greenleaf Whittier, who became an early supporter of her work. When she was 22, Larcom moved west with her sisters and became a teacher, first in Illinois and later at Wheaton Seminary in Norton, Massachusetts.
Larcom’s poetry was first included in the anthology Female Poets of America (1849), and her collections of poetry include Similitudes, from the Ocean and Prairie (1853), Poems (1868), and Wild Roses of Cape Ann, and Other Poems (1881), among others. Her poems appeared in prestigious journals and magazines such as Harpers, the Atlantic Monthly, and the New England Magazine; her poem encouraging fellow abolitionists to settle in Kansas, “Call to Kansas,” won the New England Emigrant Aid Company prize and was printed in newspapers across the nation. As Whittier’s long-time friend and correspondent, she also anonymously edited three volumes of his work.
Larcom’s most enduring work, however, is generally considered to be her autobiography, A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (1889). Recollecting her years in Beverly and Lowell, Larcom’s narrative is a richly detailed account of gender, labor, and class in mid-nineteenth century New England.
Larcom died in 1893 in Boston, and was buried in Beverly. Larcom Hall on the Wheaton College Campus is named for her.
Larcom’s poetry was first included in the anthology Female Poets of America (1849), and her collections of poetry include Similitudes, from the Ocean and Prairie (1853), Poems (1868), and Wild Roses of Cape Ann, and Other Poems (1881), among others. Her poems appeared in prestigious journals and magazines such as Harpers, the Atlantic Monthly, and the New England Magazine; her poem encouraging fellow abolitionists to settle in Kansas, “Call to Kansas,” won the New England Emigrant Aid Company prize and was printed in newspapers across the nation. As Whittier’s long-time friend and correspondent, she also anonymously edited three volumes of his work.
Larcom’s most enduring work, however, is generally considered to be her autobiography, A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (1889). Recollecting her years in Beverly and Lowell, Larcom’s narrative is a richly detailed account of gender, labor, and class in mid-nineteenth century New England.
Larcom died in 1893 in Boston, and was buried in Beverly. Larcom Hall on the Wheaton College Campus is named for her.
Specific Poem on flower (that I'd like to use):
The Nineteenth of April
Related Poem Content Details
This year, till late in April, the snow fell thick and light:
Thy truce-flag, friendly Nature, in clinging drifts of white,
Hung over field and city: now everywhere is seen,
In place of that white quietness, a sudden glow of green.
The verdure climbs the Common, beneath the leafless trees,
To where the glorious Stars and Stripes are floating on the breeze.
There, suddenly as Spring awoke from Winter’s snow-draped gloom,
The Passion-Flower of Seventy-six is bursting into bloom.
Dear is the time of roses, when earth to joy is wed,
And garden-plot and meadow wear one generous flush of red;
But now in dearer beauty, to her ancient colors true,
Blooms the old town of Boston in red and white and blue.
Along the whole awakening North are those bright emblems spread;
A summer noon of patriotism is burning overhead:
No party badges flaunting now, no word of clique or clan;
But “Up for God and Union!” is the shout of every man.
Oh, peace is dear to Northern hearts; our hard-earned homes more dear;
But freedom is beyond the price of any earthly cheer;
And freedom’s flag is sacred; he who would work it harm,
Let him, although a brother, beware our strong right arm!
A brother! ah, the sorrow, the anguish of that word!
The fratricidal strife begun, when will its end be heard?
Not this the boon that patriot hearts have prayed and waited for;—
We loved them, and we longed for peace: but they would have it war.
Yes; war! on this memorial day, the day of Lexington,
A lightning-thrill along the wires from heart to heart has run.
Brave men we gazed on yesterday, to-day for us have bled:
Again is Massachusetts blood the first for Freedom shed.
To war,—and with our brethren, then,—if only this can be!
Life hangs as nothing in the scale against dear Liberty!
Though hearts be torn asunder, for Freedom we will fight:
Our blood may seal the victory, but God will shield the Right!
Source: “Words for the Hour”: A New Anthology of American Civil War Poetry, edited by Faith Barrett and Cristanne Miller (University of Massachusetts Press, 2005)
Larcom's Work:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/lucy-larcom
Larcom's headstone is located in Plot Larch Avenue, Subdivision 8, lot 229, and is towards the front (the part that the player will be walking on) of the lot.
"It is strange that the spot of earth where we were born should make such a difference to us… If I had opened my eyes upon this planet elsewhere than in this northeast corner of Massachusetts, elsewhere than on this green rocky strip of shore between Beverly Bridge and the Misery Islands, it seems to me as if I must have been somebody else, and not myself."
In this quote from the autobiography of her childhood, A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD, Lucy Larcom remembers the town of Beverly, Massachusetts, where she was born, May 15, 1824. Her father, Benjamin, was a sea captain who died when Lucy was 11 years old. Lucy's mother Lois, moved the family to the mill city of Lowell, Massachusetts, where Lucy got a job in the Lowell textile mills. Lucy and her sisters wrote for and co-edited the Lowell Offering, a literary magazine by and for the mill workers. At age 22, she moved to St. Louis with her sister Emeline Larcom Spaulding and her husband Rev. George Spaulding. Lucy took a teaching job in Illinois, and after graduating in 1852 from the Monticello Female Seminary in Godfrey, Illinois, she returned to Massachusetts and took a position teaching English literature at Wheaton College, in Norton, Massachusetts. She began publishing her poems, and was a protégé of John Greenleaf Whittier. She died in Boston, Massachusetts, April 17, 1893 and was buried in her home town of Beverly.
In this quote from the autobiography of her childhood, A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD, Lucy Larcom remembers the town of Beverly, Massachusetts, where she was born, May 15, 1824. Her father, Benjamin, was a sea captain who died when Lucy was 11 years old. Lucy's mother Lois, moved the family to the mill city of Lowell, Massachusetts, where Lucy got a job in the Lowell textile mills. Lucy and her sisters wrote for and co-edited the Lowell Offering, a literary magazine by and for the mill workers. At age 22, she moved to St. Louis with her sister Emeline Larcom Spaulding and her husband Rev. George Spaulding. Lucy took a teaching job in Illinois, and after graduating in 1852 from the Monticello Female Seminary in Godfrey, Illinois, she returned to Massachusetts and took a position teaching English literature at Wheaton College, in Norton, Massachusetts. She began publishing her poems, and was a protégé of John Greenleaf Whittier. She died in Boston, Massachusetts, April 17, 1893 and was buried in her home town of Beverly.
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