Poet’s Walk runs along University Avenue between North Goodman Street and Prince Street and honors poets, past and present, as artists of the written word. You may have noticed 100 tiles and 15 granite pavers in the sidewalk with words…
When inaugurated in July 2010, at first blush, pedestrians puzzled at how to make sense of these fragments — was it one long poem? The designer, William Cochran, selected the liveliest words of the 115 poems, words of poems scribed by those with a Rochester connection, some still living.
There are many famous poets with Rochester connections —Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglas, Emerson, William Carlos Williams, E.E. Cummings, W.S. Merwin, Lucille Clifton, Cornelius Eady, Marianne Moore, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Naomi Shihab Nye to name a few. (these poets have lines inscribed on granite pavers. Other famous names (on tiles): Alan Ginsberg, W.S. Merwin, Marie Howe, Rita Dove, Robert Creeley, Galway Kinnell, Carl Sandburg, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Heyen, Amiri Baraka, W.D. Snodgrass, Anne Waldman…)
You may recognize guests in the Plutzik series at University of Rochester, others through publication at BOA Editions. Some were local Professors from UR, St. John Fisher, RIT, Suny Brockport; some belong to the local poetry organizations, Just Poets and Rochester Poets, some have been teachers or readers at Writers and Books.
To read all the poems (!) https://mag.oncell.com/en/poets-walk-78374.html
look up the poem prompt tile and that will take you to the poem. You can also listen to the poems by dialing (585) 627-4132, you can hear the poems spoken aloud.
We should be able to read/discuss the first six. The other four I include to give you an idea of the variety!
Simply by M.J. Iuppa
Boarding a Bus by Steve Huff
Driving by Wanda Schubmehl
See by Sally Bittner Bonn
**
Shoulders by Naomi Shihab Nye
Tell them I'm struggling to sing with angels by David Meltzer
Bus Stop by Laure-Anne Bosselaar
Rochester Rhythms by Vincent F.A. Golphin
Invitation to Tea by Kitty Jospé
One Heart by Li-Young Lee
Only Geri and Suzanne came today. For "Simply", I loved Suzanne's honesty... I don't get it! Isn't that the case of so many poems. Geri enjoys making summaries of how the poems "mean" to her. Such a curious title... Simply as adverb could almost feel like advice to live simply... taking an old childhood song (rain, rain, go away, come again some other day)
as spring board, to jump (too sudden)... How "too" could mean "also" -- so the song, arriving perhaps attached to wanting tears, or sorrow to go away, shifts to vivid details that carry the tune away.
Boarding a bus: the poem tile "each of them whisper" acts like an overtone of warning... We wondered if there weren't some autobiographical detail involved in the book, Daring Escapes, from which the poem was taken.
Escape, whether through drugs, alcohol, distraction... or taking a bus to... who knows where, is perhaps what we all do.
This glimpse of a couple in a small town in Iowa invites us to examine how we face whatever it is we face. I love the details of counting "fives and ones" like evening prayers... repeat... then declare-- with the actual words quoted...
We enjoyed how the poem "unrolls" the scene, just as we wonder how far they get... the ominous feel of sunset,
loneliness, the old man changing a flat don't encourage us to think their ones and fives will get them far.
Driving: the repeated driving fast three times... the change from "darkness" to "dark road" the shift of "fast" to mean not speed, but staying fast, as if tightly bound before the fourth driving fast...
The strength of the gerunds... finding, claiming, blowing, coming... this progression in the dark with a sense of confidence,
bring us to driving the roads of the body, a shift of focus on the self -- one familiar with the shadows. The occlusives in
keeping ... calm... curves echo this claiming of the roads...
See: delightful glimpse of childhood... how a handful of dirt, a dandelion, shunned in an adult world contain as much magic as clouds imagined as gathered, tucked into a pocket.
Shoulders is a brilliant poem and we are lucky to have Naomi Shihab Nye's voice on poet's walk!
Beautiful example of what we all need to do... no matter how wide the road is to cross, no matter the weather...
inside our invisible jackets we all could be labeled, "FRAGILE, HANDLE WITH CARE."
Bus Stop: wonderful sounds... stubborn sleet... dusk stains it... personifying the weather -- and you feel the father calling... in the days before people shouted conversations into the wind, but shelter the phone, to keep the conversation private... but in this case, as if the father is sheltering the voice of his little girl. How that little phone is her, pressed against the cheek. It's not about waiting for a bus... what the stop of a moment... how we keep it even when we board the next.
Invitation to Tea: strong images and liquid references "draw one in"/ one "drinks the poem".
One Heart: Hard to understanding how "sky is inside you" but fitting for a poet who looks at the inside, "soul of things." Flying gives a sense of no boundaries! Even if things fall... the work of wings fastens us to the wholeness beyond us...
My words fail to convey the feel of this short poem.
3 days of a Forest, a River, Free
Very much the sense of a fugitive slave crossing the Ohio, being chased... the freedom of the forest... how crossing the river to freedom means also losing "dry fear".
Only Geri and Suzanne came today. For "Simply", I loved Suzanne's honesty... I don't get it! Isn't that the case of so many poems. Geri enjoys making summaries of how the poems "mean" to her. Such a curious title... Simply as adverb could almost feel like advice to live simply... taking an old childhood song (rain, rain, go away, come again some other day)
as spring board, to jump (too sudden)... How "too" could mean "also" -- so the song, arriving perhaps attached to wanting tears, or sorrow to go away, shifts to vivid details that carry the tune away.
Boarding a bus: the poem tile "each of them whisper" acts like an overtone of warning... We wondered if there weren't some autobiographical detail involved in the book, Daring Escapes, from which the poem was taken.
Escape, whether through drugs, alcohol, distraction... or taking a bus to... who knows where, is perhaps what we all do.
This glimpse of a couple in a small town in Iowa invites us to examine how we face whatever it is we face. I love the details of counting "fives and ones" like evening prayers... repeat... then declare-- with the actual words quoted...
We enjoyed how the poem "unrolls" the scene, just as we wonder how far they get... the ominous feel of sunset,
loneliness, the old man changing a flat don't encourage us to think their ones and fives will get them far.
Driving: the repeated driving fast three times... the change from "darkness" to "dark road" the shift of "fast" to mean not speed, but staying fast, as if tightly bound before the fourth driving fast...
The strength of the gerunds... finding, claiming, blowing, coming... this progression in the dark with a sense of confidence,
bring us to driving the roads of the body, a shift of focus on the self -- one familiar with the shadows. The occlusives in
keeping ... calm... curves echo this claiming of the roads...
See: delightful glimpse of childhood... how a handful of dirt, a dandelion, shunned in an adult world contain as much magic as clouds imagined as gathered, tucked into a pocket.
Shoulders is a brilliant poem and we are lucky to have Naomi Shihab Nye's voice on poet's walk!
Beautiful example of what we all need to do... no matter how wide the road is to cross, no matter the weather...
inside our invisible jackets we all could be labeled, "FRAGILE, HANDLE WITH CARE."
Bus Stop: wonderful sounds... stubborn sleet... dusk stains it... personifying the weather -- and you feel the father calling... in the days before people shouted conversations into the wind, but shelter the phone, to keep the conversation private... but in this case, as if the father is sheltering the voice of his little girl. How that little phone is her, pressed against the cheek. It's not about waiting for a bus... what the stop of a moment... how we keep it even when we board the next.
Invitation to Tea: strong images and liquid references "draw one in"/ one "drinks the poem".
One Heart: Hard to understanding how "sky is inside you" but fitting for a poet who looks at the inside, "soul of things." Flying gives a sense of no boundaries! Even if things fall... the work of wings fastens us to the wholeness beyond us...
My words fail to convey the feel of this short poem.
3 days of a Forest, a River, Free
Very much the sense of a fugitive slave crossing the Ohio, being chased... the freedom of the forest... how crossing the river to freedom means also losing "dry fear".
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