Walking Where Others Have Found Inspiration
Forest Pond: A Lost Landscape Remembered Through the Art it Inspired
A Treasured Source of Inspiration
Walking Where Others Have Found Inspiration
Jessie Brown, Writer
“ I don’ t remember a time when I didn’ t know about Mount Auburn,” says Jessie Brown, a writer who lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.“ For my first five years I lived within walking distance of the Cemetery. As far as I was concerned it was just the most beautiful park, far more beautiful than any of the ones with playground equipment on them. So I was used to playing here. It’ s always been part of my experience; there’ s never been a time when I didn’ t come here. Even when we moved to Belmont, and it was a little more of a hike, I would bicycle here. I brought my friends from school, as a kid. I never understood why they thought it was a little strange to play in a cemetery. They hadn’ t grown up with it like I had.”
Brown has written in every place she’ s lived, including Oberlin, Ohio, where she received her Bachelor’ s degree; the University of Córdoba, Spain; and Palo Alto, California, where she received her Master’ s degree from Stanford University. She studied poetry there with Denise Levertov, and received an American Academy of Poets prize. Her poems have appeared in various journals, and her prize-winning chapbook, Lucky, is forthcoming this spring from Anabiosis Press. Currently she works as a poet-in-residence in schools and libraries in the Boston area, both on her own and with Troubadour, an arts education collaborative. Fifteen years ago she helped found the Alewife Poets, a group of women writers who give frequent readings in the Boston area. But it’ s safe to say that she got her start at Mount Auburn.
“ Well, I have always found that it’ s easier to write outdoors. I don’ t want to sound too mystical, but I think it makes a difference to write in a place that’ s not only full of beauty, but full of history. It makes a difference to walk where others have found inspiration. It makes a difference to walk between other people’ s griefs and loves. And the monuments are reminding us of that all the time.”
Above: Jessie Brown Right: Her son Ben, now a college freshman, on one of his childhood visits to Mount Auburn.
“ The landscape also plays a part. There’ s the inspiration of its natural resources. It’ s hard not to come to Mount Auburn and see amazing things growing, or animal life that anyone would want to write about. It’ s in front of you all the time. You don’ t have to look for it at Mount Auburn; it comes to you.”
Brown has several favorite spots within the Cemetery that she likes to visit, often sitting and writing for hours. When she was still in school she frequented the Dell.“ I would sit down opposite one of the monuments and
Forest Pond: A Lost Landscape Remembered Through the Art it Inspired
Mount Auburn’ s rolling landscape of hills, dells, ponds, and meadows has always inspired its visitors, especially those artists who come to capture a vibrant glimpse of a season, preserving a living moment forever. Today there are a few areas that seem particularly popular among those seeking inspiration: lily-clad Auburn Lake, the untamed wildflower meadow at Washington Tower, and the earthen core of the Cemetery, the Dell.
In the earliest decades of Mount Auburn, however, no spot in the Cemetery rivaled Forest Pond in the affections of the public. The small figure-eight shaped pond, quietly nestled in the valley between Beech and Willow avenues, was celebrated for its picturesque qualities in paintings, daguerreotypes, romantic engravings, chalk illustrations, and poems alike. Though the Cemetery filled in Forest
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Pond in 1919, we know much about this lost landscape due to the numerous accounts, both written and visual, of this beloved spot.
One depiction of Forest Pond, painted by Thomas Chambers in the 1840s, graces the cover of this magazine. Among their many photographs of the Cemetery, daguerreotypists Southworth and Hawes captured the Winchester Tomb proudly overlooking the pond( see page 6). In her poem“ Mount Auburn,” Caroline Frances Orne describes the scene,
“… When all the tree-tops bathed in splendor glow, And a deep shadow rests on all below; Or as, like golden bars, the struggling rays Pierce through the fretted leaves’ entwining maze, As Forest Pond, that, sleeping tranquilly, From its clear depths gives back each leaf and tree, Each tomb, each monument that’ s mirrored there …”