![do not stand at my grave and weep song choir do not stand at my grave and weep song choir](https://d29ci68ykuu27r.cloudfront.net/items/19210060/look_insides/large_file/file_0_page_0.png)
Shull first publicized the claim for Mary Elizabeth Frye's authorship in a newspaper column for the Indianapolis News on 9 June 1983. In 1981, newspaper columnist Bettelou Peterson identified the author for enquiring readers as "the late Clara Harner Lyon, of California." Later many other claimants to the poem's authorship emerged, including attributions to traditional and Native American origins.
DO NOT STAND AT MY GRAVE AND WEEP SONG CHOIR MOVIE
Interest surged after the poem was read as a graveside eulogy by actor Harold Gould in the 1979 NBC TV movie Better Late Than Never. Kansas native Clare Harner's original poem "Immortality" was reprinted from The Gypsy in the Kansas City Times on 8 February 1935. Each line is in iambic tetrameter, except for lines five and seven, the fifth having an extra syllable, the seventh, two extra. The poem is twelve lines long, rhyming in couplets. Original versionīelow is the version published in The Gypsy of December 1934 (page 16), under the title "Immortality" and followed by the author's name and location: "CLARE HARNER, Topeka, Kan." The indentation and line breaks are as given there. However, the Oxford journal " Notes and Queries" published a 2018 article claiming the poem, originally titled " Immortality", was in fact written by Clare Harner Lyon (1909-1977) and first published under her maiden name (Harner) in the December 1934 issue of The Gypsy poetry magazine. This was purportedly confirmed in 1998 research conducted for the newspaper column " Dear Abby" ( Pauline Phillips).
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During the late 1990s, Mary Elizabeth Frye claimed to have written the poem in 1932. The poem was popularized during the late 1970s thanks to a reading by John Wayne that inspired further readings on television. " Do not stand at my grave and weep" is the first line and popular title of a bereavement poem of disputed authorship. The poem on a gravestone at St Peter’s church, Wapley, England