Poet Dan Guillory to appear at Vachel Lindsay Home on Saturday
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[September 05, 2013]
SPRINGFIELD -- Poet Dan Guillory
visits the Vachel Lindsay Home State Historic Site on Saturday to
read selections from his work, including his latest book on historic
homes from Illinois to Washington, D.C.
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The free "Poets in the Parlor" event will be at 2 p.m., and light
refreshments will be served. The Vachel Lindsay Association is
co-sponsoring the event.
Guillory has written several books of history, essays and poems.
His latest is "HousePoems," which imagines visits to a variety of
houses. One of them is the Vachel Lindsay Home itself, where Lindsay
killed himself in 1931.
Guillory wrote:
The
pornography of pain, the evocations
Of
death and suffering still resonate, as if
Ready for exploitation; see where the poet
Died, the steepness of the stairs, imagine
How
they carried him to the top — as if
The ineffable could be
put into words.
Guillory said his new book is "meant to celebrate my neighbors --
literal ones like Irene Lash who loved next door, and spiritual or
cultural figures like Lincoln, Lindsay and Frank Lloyd Wright."
He continued: "In the middle of this real and imagined
neighborhood stands my Cajun grandfather, Landry Desselles. The
heterogeneity -- public and private realms -- is intentional on my
part, including the last section of the book on U.S. presidents."
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The
Vachel Lindsay Home State Historic Site, operated by the
Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, is open Tuesday through
Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for free public tours.
The home, located at 603 S. Fifth St. in Springfield, was built
about 1850. Poet, author and artist Nicholas Vachel Lindsay was born
there in 1879 and died there in 1931.
[Text from file received from the
Illinois Historic Preservation Agency]
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