Kristin Bierfelt: The North Shore Literary Trail (2007)

Kristin Bierfelt's title The North Shore Literary Trail: From Bradstreet's Andover to Hawthorne's Salem only gives the briefest indication of the contents of this fascinating book, and although it only covers a small geographical area, it contains a large number of writers who have lived in this part of Massachusetts.

Over fifty writers are mentioned in eighteen towns or villages, and a number of posts I've made this year relate to graves, statues, houses, etc, discovered solely as a result of reading this book. Not only was I led to features of which I was previously unaware concerning famous writers, but I was also informed of writers of whom I hadn't heard, such as Alonzo Lewis, Vincent Ferrini, Harriet Prescott Spofford, John Marquand, Lucy Larcom, etc.

Although the subject of the book is literature, it's fortunate that the author stretches the term to a large extent at times because I don't know where else I'd have heard of Roger Babson's eccentric boulder carvings in Dogtown near Gloucester (except perhaps in Anita Diamant's novel The Last Days of Dogtown (2005)), or the fact that the The Scaffold's song 'Lily the Pink' alludes to Lynn resident Lydia Estes Pinkham's Vegetable Compound ('Medicinal Compound' in the song): a strongly alcoholic concoction said to have worked wonders for menstrual pains and menopausal problems that sold very well during the Prohibition years.*

This book is a must for anyone traveling in north-east Massachusetts who is even remotely interested in literature.

*There is a Lydia Pinkham Memorial Clinic in Salem, built by Pinkham's daughter in 1922, almost forty years after her mother's death.

Charles Olson in Gloucester, Cape Ann, Massachusetts

Often mentioned in the same breath as Black Mountain College, North Carolina, the poet Charles Olson - who was born in Saugus, Massachusetts - lived here from 1958, which was where he'd spent his summers as a child, and where he stayed until his death in 1970. The huge collection Maximus Poems centers on the history of Gloucester and the area, such as the abandoned Dogtown Commons. His main infuences are Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams.

'Charles Olson

Poet

1910 - 1970'

Olson was friends (although not without problems) with another Gloucester poet - Vincent Ferrini (1913-2007) - whom he'd originally visited in Gloucester as a kind of fan after reading 'This House'. Ferrini was a working-class poet who'd worked as a shoe factory worker and in a GEC factory in Lynn, and had a picture frame workshop in his garage at his home on East Main Street, Gloucester, where he lived for 50 years.

This is a link to Hydra Magazine article 'The Battle of Gloucester: Vincent Ferrini Meets Charles Olson'.

Judith Sargent Murray in Gloucester, Cape Ann, Massachusetts

 Judith Sargent Murray spent almost all of her life in Gloucester and was a powerful supporter of women's rights. Her education came from reading in her parents' large library. She was an essayist, poet, playwright and editor who wrote 'On the Equality of the Sexes' (which predates Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)) as 'Constantia'.

And opposite the house, a long mural in which Murray is the main focus:

'THIS MURAL WAS PAINTED IN 1996 BY BE SARGENT ALLEN TO HONOR

JUDITH SARGENT MURRAY OF GLOUCESTER (1751 - 1820)

FEMINIST, VISIONARY & COMMUNITY ACTIVIST'

Boat Building, Gloucester, Cape Ann, Massachusetts

I firmly believe that GPS is not sent from heaven, and that getting lost is very often educational: having turned off at the wrong interstate exit, we found ourselves lost in South Gloucester with no clue where to go, but then we spotted a resident getting into her car, and on her discovering that we were heading for downtown Gloucester, Cape Ann, Massachusetts, she told me to follow her, and I did – right up to the front of her workplace:

Susanne Altenburger builds boats, and this is what she's doing now in Gloucester.  It was fascinating talking about this project to Susanne, and more detail of this work is available in a Gloucester Times article here.