I’m not sure if it’s intended to reblog a post for Just Jot It January or not but I am writing this blurb, so it should count. š
I was thinking of this poem because the Water Street parking ramp which housed murals from the Department of Public Art is being demolished. The whole first stanza is about that art so it feels strange to see local artists discussing its destruction on the news. It remains to be seen if some of the art will be re-created elsewhere as it was very site-specific.
It also occurs to me that, over five years later, the Heart of the Arts dinner crowd is still the largest audience for whom I have read.
Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/01/30/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-30th-2022/
When I revealed my secret poetry mission, I promised to share the text of my poem āThanks to the Department of Public Artā after it was published in the fall anthology of the Binghamton Poetry Project. Ā The anthology is available tonight at our reading, so I am pleased to share the poem below. Here is a recording of my original reading at the 2016 Heart of the Arts Awards dinner.
Thanks to the Department of Public Art
~~ by Joanne Corey
Ā for Emily Jablon, Peg Johnston, and all whose hearts are in the arts
Stencils and murals
on descending levels
of the Water Street parking ramp
time-travel through that historic corner ā
Link Blue Box flight simulators
evolve from pipe organs ā
punching in on Bundy
time recording machines
in the days before IBM
and the move to Endicott ā
on street level
āWelcome to theā¦
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