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Park visitors, beware. You may encounter poems. [1]
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Date: 2024-08-22 17:22:38+00:00
Beauty and wildlife abound in U.S. national parks. This summer, poetry does too, thanks to a new program that inscribes verse on picnic tables. Thus, lunchtime visitors to Everglades National Park will enjoy poet June Jordan’s description of a marsh hawk as it
“explodes with a powerful shuffling of feathers
aimed in a 45-degree angle that leads
to the sky above the sea”
At Mount Rainier National Park, A.R. Ammons’ lines describe grain on top of a mountain, which
“endures
the rigors of having
no further
figure to complete
and a
blank sky”
Seven poems grace seven of the 431 U.S. national parks, thanks to a Poetry in Parks program, the brainchild of U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, who through her office at the Library of Congress teamed up with the National Park Service and the Poetry Society of America to make it happen. (The National Park Service celebrates its 108th anniversary August 25.)
The poetry project is part of Limon’s larger You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World program, which also published an anthology of poetry about nature. The first poems were installed in June at Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts. The ongoing effort will end with the last two unveilings October 8 in the Everglades National Park in Florida and December 3 in Saguaro National Park in Arizona.
“People are so moved by the opportunity to slow down and take a moment to focus … and connect to the world around them in a deeper way,” says Shauna Potocky, an education specialist with the National Park Service.
The poems were chosen to resonate with their surroundings. The poem “Cloud Song” in Saguaro National Park has an extra connection because its writer, poet Ofelia Zepeda, is from the area.
“Never has it been more urgent to feel a sense of reciprocity with our environment, and poetry’s alchemical mix of attention, silence and rhythm gives us a reciprocal way of experiencing nature — of communing with the natural world through breath and presence,” Limón said.
How to approach poems in the wild
Matt Brogan, executive director of the Poetry Society of America, says many people are intimidated by poetry, and his group wants to help. It supports programs to bring poems to transit systems and other public spaces so people can discover poetry in the context of their daily lives.
“It’s harder to be intimidated by something you find on a picnic table in a park,” he says. Poetry “doesn’t belong locked up somewhere.”
Park visitors are invited to respond to the poetry and their surroundings. Beside each poem on the parks’ tabletops is the prompt “What would you write in response to the landscape around you?”
“It provides an opportunity for people to experience the place … and engage with the poem,” Potocky said. On social media, visitors have responded with poems of their own and photographs (#youareherepoetry).
It’s not the first time the parks have connected with arts, Potocky points out. Photographer Ansel Adams was famous for gorgeous landscapes captured in U.S. national parks, and painters have long drawn inspiration from their natural beauty.
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