O2 - Issue 2 - (Page 64)

[MUSINGS] WELL VERSED Lower Manhattan is a veritable playground of poetry I [1] [2] F POETRY IS A RENEWABLE RESOURCE—IT DOES COME FROM THE [3] wellsprings of creativity and sentiment, after all—then it’s fitting that Poets House will take up green digs in Riverhouse. The 22-year-old literary center and poetry archive’s home will include a technology-laden programming hall, a capacious reading room overlooking the Hudson, and a children’s room. While Poets House prepares its move, staffer Christina Davis shows O2 that Riverhouse’s neighborhood is already geared to discovering poetry, with works and excerpts literally written into the landscape. Strewn across Stuyvesant Plaza, at the northern tip of Battery Park City, are etched bits from two great American poets and from the great French architect Le Corbusier. Below are, respectively, Hart Crane’s “To Brooklyn Bridge,” “Granite and Steel” by Marianne Moore, and When the Cathedrals Were White, a thought from Le Corbusier’s book about his 1935 journey to America. “To Brooklyn Bridge” How many dawns, chill from the rippling rest The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him, Shedding white rings of tumult, building high Over the chained bay waters Liberty“Granite and Steel” Enfranchising cable, silvered by the sea, of woven wire, grayed by the mist, and Liberty dominate the Bayher feet as one on shattered chains, once whole links wrought by Tyranny. When the Cathedrals Were White A hundred times I have thought: New York is a catastrophe, And fifty times: It is a beautiful catastrophe. [4] Run your hands along the railings of North Cove Marina to find an excerpt from “City of Ships,” by master Walt Whitman. City of the World! (for all races are here, All the lands of the earth make contributions here;) City of the sea! City of the wharves and stores—city of tall facades of marble and iron! Proud and passionate city—mettlesome, mad, extravagant city! North Cove Marina is also home to Meditations in an Emergency, by New York School of Poetry legend Frank O’Hara—although from the sound of this excerpt, O’Hara would have been happier traipsing among the icons of Lower Manhattan than standing at its water’s edge. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. This Edna St. Vincent Millay quote appears at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. It is taken from “Recuerdo,” a poem she wrote before the opening of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in 1964. We were very tired, we were very merryWe had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. PHOTOGRAPHY BY OLIVIA HORNER 64 [ O2GREENMAGAZINE.COM ] http://O2GREENMAGAZINE.COM

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O2 - Issue 2 Contents Letter Freshpicks Itinerary The Hunt Flight O2 Outer Beauty Fuel 4 Thought Health Tech One to Watch Great Outdoors Features Future Focus Musings

O2 - Issue 2

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