Thursday, May 12, 2011

A Poetic Walking Tour with Salem Historian Jim McAllister

To celebrate the Massachusetts Poetry Festival and Salem’s poetic heritage, Salem historian, author and history columnist Jim McAllister, will offer a lively and entertaining walking tour called Poets, Poetry and Poetic Places in Salem.

The tour will meet on Friday, May 13th at the main entrance to the Salem Visitor Center on New Liberty Street across from the Peabody Essex Museum at 2:30 p.m.

Come and take a 1 hour and 15 minute grand promenade and hear about important 19th century poets and their real life or literary connections to Salem.

Stops will include Salem’s famed Lyceum Hall where Emerson lectured 36 times and where Very Jones witnessed Alexander Graham Bell’s first telephone call. You will pass the Quaker Meeting House, Parker Brothers Game Company, the Charter Street Burial ground, the Salem Witch Trials memorial and other sites with surprising and  colorful poetic lore. The tour will end just before 4 p.m. at The Salem Athenaeum on Essex Street in time for Charlotte Gordon’s talk on the illustrious first published American woman poet, Anne Bradstreet. 

A $10 Button ($5 for seniors and students) will be your ticket of entry for all Massachusetts Poetry Festival events. Buttons can be purchased online at MassPoetry.org or in Salem at the following locations:
  • Roost, 40 Front Street
  • Salemdipity, 86 Wharf Street on Pickering Wharf
  • Salem Witch Museum, 19 ½ Washington Square North
  • Signatures Apparel, 181 Essex Street (on the Pedestrian Mall)
  • Salem Trolley Depot “191 Essex Street (on the Pedestrian Mall)
  • Gulu Gulu Cafe, 247 Essex Street

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