Poetry in Motion: Cast your ballot and get on board
“We have some exciting poetry news!”
Press releases starting like that don’t hit the central clearing desk at Art Scatter World Headquarters very often, so of course we dropped everything else and immediately investigated. We’ve been waiting for some exciting poetry news ever since the cat lost his hat.
What is this big news? Poetry in Motion is back on track. Regular readers may recall Mrs. Scatter’s lamentation last June over its disappearance, and her call for commuters to take matters poetical into their own hands. The program behind those printed poems posted above the seats on Tri-Met buses and trains, which is administered by Literary Arts, has been on hiatus for financial reasons. Now it’s recruited new sponsors and is ready to rhyme (or not) again. What’s more, you can vote on which poems out of thousands of possibilities you’d like to share your ride with: Vote here.
Perhaps you’d like to celebrate by writing your own poem about reading poetry on the bus. Here are a few key words:
Bus. Muss. Truss. Fuss. Cuss. Deciduous.
Now all you have to do is fill in the blanks. Happy versing!
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Pictured: T.S. Eliot, painted by his friend Wyndham Lewis in 1938. Lighten up, Tom! You could be rolling on the bus! Wikimedia Commons.
January 24th, 2010 at 7:27 pm
Goodnuss!
January 24th, 2010 at 8:56 pm
I will not be modest. One of the best civic acts I’ve done in Pdx is raise such a stink over the first two years of this program, during which the poems became art objects at the mercy of art directors putting gray lettering on peach backgrounds, making the poems impossible to read (while all nearby advertising, large black letters on white, was perfectly readable) that they came to their senses and fired the art directors (I hope) and used the advertising model so we riders could read the poems! However, I still was disappointed when I asked which bus would have a poem by my brother, Bill Deemer, that had been selected and they couldn’t tell me. Apparently they have no record of what goes where, so we riders can’t hitch a ride with our favorite poets. I would like to see this corrected.
January 25th, 2010 at 8:01 pm
Hooray! So glad we’ll have poetry on wheels again. Though I agree with you, Charles, those panels were very poorly designed the first few years. It’s good they realized that and made a change.
January 26th, 2010 at 7:00 am
Posted the link on Facebook the other day. Glad we’ll have new poetry up on our rides.
January 27th, 2010 at 6:04 am
Voice from the Couch did cuss
as he made a fuss
over putting together the truss
for a poem about a bus
he decided that he had created quite a muss
so let the words drop as if deciduous.
Instead he wrote the following…
Our eyes met for just a moment.
Quietly I turned away.
“Don’t slouch — sit up straight.”
a voice inside me barked.
Then as the earth stood still –
we lurched to a stop –
– the door opened and I was
alone again.
January 27th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Bravo, LaValle and Voice from the Couch. Mr. Scatter’s prompt words were, all right, ridiculous. But you have overcome. What you’ve accomplished here, considering the economic underpinnings of the blogosphere, is an indisputable example of free verse.