THE TERATOLOGY DEAD POOL: 2011

Instead of a New Year's resolution, I decided to come up with a list of graves I want to visit in 2011.While the list is invariably dominated by writers, I wanted to cover a wide spectrum of artists, including musicians, television personalities, and theatrical performers (lacking a better term for Spalding Gray). There are no American Presidents on the list (that's a whole other project), but rest assured, there will be much dead president hunting in 2011.

While there are others that I am planning to visit (Jackson Pollack, Gary Cooper, Horatio Alger, and a re-visit to Charles Bronson) these are the fourteen that I am most interested in seeing. I consider it to be fairly ambitious. Even though most of them can be covered in a day trip, the list does cover seven states.

Also, if you see someone you share an interest in, let me know. Last year I had  two wonderful trips to cemeteries with friends, and this year there is room for more. I'll definitely be taking photographs of each and rubbings of most, if you're into that sort of thing, I can always make an extra rubbing as well.

Finally, for the sake of fairness, they're listed in alphabetical order:

John Coltrane - Farmingdale, NY - Pinelawn Memorial Park

F. Scott Fitzgerald (and Zelda) - Rockville, MD - Saint Mary's Cemetery 

Robert Frost - Bennington, VT - Old Bennington Cemetery

Allen Ginsberg - Newark, NJ - Gomel Chesed Cemetery 

Spalding Gray - Sag Harbor, NY - Oakland Cemetery 

Dashiell Hammett and Charles Willeford - Arlington, VA - Arlington National Cemetery

Jack Kerouac - Lowell, MA  -  Edson Cemetery

H.P. Lovecraft - Providence, RI - Swan Point Cemetery 

Frank O'Hara - East Hampton, NY  - Green River Cemetery 

Edgar Allan Poe - Baltimore, MD, Westminster Burial Ground

Rod Serling - Interlaken, NY - Lake View Cemetery 

 Donald Westlake (a.k.a. Richard Stark) - ??? UNKNOWN ???

Walt Whitman  - Camden, NJ - Harliegh Cemetery