Bus poetry nearing end of the line

Slowly, surely and sadly, the poetry is disappearing from my bus. I'm not speaking in metaphors. The views on the ride downtown from the east side are still lovely enough most days to inspire a little free verse. But the poetry is going away, on my route and yours.

Twelve years ago, TriMet and the folks at the nonprofit Literary Arts conspired to put advertising cards decorated with poems on every Portland-area bus and MAX train. The effort is part of a national project called Poetry in Motion, originally inspired by poems placed in the London Underground and run by the Poetry Society of America.This isn't exactly a golden age for poetry consumption, unless perhaps you count clever Twitter posts and text messages. Except for special events -- weddings, funerals, any occasion that calls for a trip to the Hallmark store -- poems are not an everyday form of communication. The poetry section is usually small and hidden at most bookstores.

The point of Poetry in Motion is to bring poems to the mass-transit riding masses, to people who might appreciate a little Charles Simic or Seamus Heaney, but gave up the poetry habit as soon as they graduated from high school or college.

Oregon poets who've been featured say they've noticed the impact.

"I hear from people all the time," says Lisa Steinman, an English professor at Reed College whose work has been featured twice, including the poem "A Simple Song for Highway 99E," which may well have been read by bus riders on Highway 99E.

"Sometimes it's someone who actually remembers what they read. Sometimes it's just a merchant who sees my name on a credit card and says, 'Don't I know you?' Usually, they know me from the bus."

Over the years, Literary Arts printed cards featuring 140 different poems or excerpts. Writers can get downright poetic talking about the program. After all, most will never get an audience as large as this.

"These works have a wonderful life out there," says Portland poet Paulann Petersen. "They have wheels."

But the groups behind bus poetry are as strapped for cash as everyone else. The people at Literary Arts, stuck without a sponsor, haven't selected any new poems or printed any new cards since 2007. TriMet uses the space above bus windows for various public service campaigns and has gradually been replacing poems with other signs, such as reminders about proper bus etiquette and honors for its drivers of the year.

In the grand scheme of the great recession, these are small losses. It's usually hard to tell who even notices the remaining poems. My fellow bus riders often seem in a daze, lost in a newspaper or novel, busy tending to small children or bopping away to the beat of their iPods.

But we need art, in all its forms, particularly when times are tough.

We've heard a lot recently about the damage the poor economy -- poor being perhaps an understatement -- is inflicting on local arts. The Oregon Ballet Theatre, whose donations are down 50 percent, will hold a last-ditch benefit concert later this month. The free summer concerts at Washington Park were doomed this year until Portland-area businesses stepped up with $120,000.

Poets, not surprisingly, have been far quieter about the slow disappearance of the bus cards. They're a reclusive and solitary lot to begin with, untrained in the art of begging for cash. They tend to be more subtle in their pitches than, "The world as we know it will end if this goes away," which seems to be the strategy other arts groups are adopting in their quest for fiscal survival.

Yet in its own way, this slow disappearance is just as significant as losing the ballet or park concerts would be: an unexpected bit of culture on the daily commute.

-- Anna Griffin; annagriffin@news.oregonian.com