This is Poetry Moment on WPSU – a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet and author Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, author of more than 20 books, and Professor Emerita of English and creative writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
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Welcome to Poetry Moment.
This Memorial Day, consider today’s poem, “Friends Southwestern Burial Ground,” by Luke Stromberg. Written about the Quaker burial ground across the street from the poet’s Upper Darby home, the sonnet houses the grief from a brother’s death. Do you see the plain, low headstones alongside the complexity of loss? It is in this quiet spot that dates back to the 19th Century, Stromberg explains. It is there in a semi-urban neighborhood by the 69th Street Transportation Center.
Luke Stromberg is the author of the poetry collection The Elephant’s Mouth (Kelsay Books, 2022). His poetry has appeared in Smartish Pace, The Hopkins Review, The New Criterion, Literary Matters, Think Journal, and elsewhere. He is an English instructor at Eastern University and St. Joseph’s University and lives in Upper Darby, PA with his wife, Laura, and daughter, Iris.
Luke Stromberg has stopped often by the Friends Southwestern Burial Ground, so much so that he became friends with the caretaker while visiting both his father’s and brother’s gravesites. The quiet burial grounds, the poet tells us, exist in sharp contrast to a noisy and sorrowful world. The location lures him in with its calm. Apparently, others agreed because for many years the sexton showcased today’s sonnet on the cemetery’s webpage.
Here’s Luke Stromberg’s poem “Friends Southwestern Burial Ground,” a winner of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s poetry contest:
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The place is loaded up with dead, but still
The low white tombstones hunkered in the grass
Are baby teeth that bear us no ill will.
Its stony wall and gothic fence encompass
A rural oasis tucked among the lanes
Of anxious row homes, corner stores, and taverns.
At night, the brakes of the commuter trains
Screech faintly beneath the screech of its environs.
There, death is made to seem a shutting out
Of all the noise and fuss of dailiness,
And, somehow, we feel more at ease about
The last breath we all have awaiting us.
Outside its gates, this life’s so thick with grief
That we can hardly wait for that relief.
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That was “Friends Southwestern Burial Ground” by Luke Stromberg. Thanks for joining me for this last episode of the season.
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Poetry Moment will take a hiatus starting next week and will return at the end of the summer. You can hear this season's episodes at wpsu.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
