Colleen Coyne created “Memento Mori” from The Glory of Greylock: Written as a Souvenir of an Excursion by Francis Williams Rockwell (1921). Please click here to read.

About the poem and the process of composing it, Colleen Coyne writes:

I’m interested in travelogues, interpretive signage, and other linguistic elements that can mediate our experience of place, and I came across this particular “souvenir” text about Mt. Greylock while researching a different nearby site. I experienced the beauty and charm of Rockwell’s excursion on one of my own trips to Mt. Greylock, on a glorious autumn day—but I’ve also been there during a night of dense fog, navigating treacherous roads, and my experience was tinged with tension. As I read through a digitized version of The Glory of Greylock, I pulled phrases and sentences that resonated with me, and then I remixed them into this poem, in which I aim to reflect the hint of fear and loss that can accompany even joyful journeys. The only text I added is the title, which is Latin for “remember you will die.”