A Little More About St. Paul Sidewalk Poetry

In October of 2009, I wrote a post about the poetry impressed into the sidewalks in St. Paul, Minnesota. At the time, I wondered various things about how this whole thing worked.

I wondered who was responsible for this amusing diversion. Some people at St. Mark’s School in the Merriam Park neighborhood informed me that it was a project of St. Paul Public Works. There is a page at the City of St. Paul website on sidewalk poetry. It’s actually a little more complicated than that, because it is a collaboration between the city and a non-profit organization, Public Art St. Paul. The official name of the project, Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk, is the brainchild of Marcus Young, who is being funded by Public Art St. Paul, and who has somehow convinced the powers that be to put poetry in sidewalks, among other things. One could do worse.

I wondered how the poetry got impressed in the sidewalks. When a patch of sidewalk is repaired, for whatever reason, a poetry installation is contemplated. When a poem is selected, a stamp is constructed of that poem, and the stamp is pressed into the drying concrete.

There is a FAQ document on the project, that explains the details. I suppose there are people who don’t want poetry on the sidewalk in front of their houses. What must they be like?

I wondered where the poems were. I saw some on Dayton in Merriam Park, one on Ashland and Fairview, and one on Sheridan, further south. Here is a map showing sidewalk poetry locations in St. Paul.

I didn’t wonder how I could get one of my poems stamped into the sidewalk, until I saw the announcement on local cable access for the 2010 Poetry Contest. I submitted the following poem.

There is a place
A place I love
Where streets are paved with poetry
And named for feelings felt while reading
Verses in concrete

Encouragement
Resolution
Are crossing Thank-You Avenue
Poems surprising, harmonizing
Make my joy complete.

I tried really hard to make it where you could put the two verses side by side, and it would make sense. I saw a picture in my mind’s eye where the two verses would be like the two wings of a beautiful bird. On further review, there is a problem with a couple of the lines, (“Resolution,” “Verses in concrete”) as the rhythm of the line doesn’t line up against the syllable emphasis of the words. I just know there’s a word that poets use to describe that, but I don’t know what it is yet. For now, I shall call it an infelicity, a fancy word for an unhappiness. I believe it would be better if I changed “Resolution” to “Divinity,” but at this point, I got nothing regarding “Verses in concrete.” Is it ok the way it is?

St. Paul Poet Laureate Carol Connolly, whom you’ve met before in this space, was one of the judges. On one hand, I was not one of the five winning poets, neither was I one of the five honorable mentions. On the other hand, they didn’t give me any feedback about my poem, so it’s pointless to speculate about what the judges thought. On yet another hand, if I found something I didn’t like about my poem, perhaps someone else did too. Someone find me a one-handed poet!

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