"Ghosts appear in place of whatever a given people will not face" (p. 65)

The poems inGravesend 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.

"Ghosts appear in place of whatever a given people will not face" (p. 65)

The poems inGravesend 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.

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 Jéromette 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