Like Decorations in a Cemetery
An extra-ordinary recitation of Wallace Stevens’ poem accompanied by the construction of a table-top grave.
Stevens’ 1935 poem is called Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery. It references the Black cemeteries Stevens saw in the American South, where poverty meant that graves were rarely marked with headstones, but with folk-art assemblages of shells, flowers, household objects, and more. Each stanza of the poem is a poignant, impoverished gesture in the face of mortality.
The title of this performance was changed to Like Decorations in a Cemetery. Obviously the poem invites analysis of white, patriarchal appropriation; this performance did not address that (beyond bringing a woman’s body and voice to the poem), but focused instead on its broader theme of mortality.
Dressed for mourning, a woman enters with a red toolbox, and empties a pile of dirt onto a table-top. As she recites the poem, she unpacks objects—shells, a tiny candelabra constructed of plumbing parts, spoons, bird feathers—each used as “instrument” or object reference for the sound or image of each stanza, and ultimately placed as decoration on the miniature grave.
Excerpt from Like Decorations in a Cemetery, a performance by Laylage Courie of Wallace Stevens’ poem. 2006 a the Bowery Poetry Project.
In 2013, I re-recorded the poem in a more subtle vocal style: