A WALK THROUGH GRACELAND CEMETERY WITH EMILY DICKINSON

Designer; photographer; illustrator

For this accordion fold book, I chose to focus on Chicago’s beautiful and historic Graceland Cemetery and used Emily Dickinson’s poem, Dead, as my text. My self-imposed challenge was to create a depiction of Graceland Cemetery without showing photographs of grave markers or monuments.

Dead
Emily Dickinson

There’s something quieter than sleep
Within this inner room!
It wears a sprig upon its breast,
And will not tell its name.

Some touch it and some kiss it,
Some chafe its idle hand;
It has a simple gravity
I do not understand!

While simple-hearted neighbors
Chat of the ‘early dead,’
We, prone to periphrasis,
Remark that birds have fled!