How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Walk through Boston on a rainy afternoon and you're apt to behold an interesting sight: lines of poetry strewn about your feet that fade as quickly as they appeared before the glare of the rising sun. The experience comes courtesy of a collaborative effort between the City of Boston and nonprofit group Mass Poetry, which painted the proses on various sidewalks throughout the city to honor April's National Poetry Month. Using special water-resistant sprays and stencils, the artists were able to create "secret" poems that reveal themselves on city pavement only when doused in rain.
"We want to bring poetry to the people,” said Sara Siegel, Mass Poetry's program director.
The poems were selected by Boston’s Poet Laureate, Danielle Legros Georges, and installed by the Mayor's Mural Crew. The project has been quite a hit, judging from all the publicity it has received. Pleased with its warm reception, the city will be adding more poems in the coming weeks and months, including some in other languages.
We'd love to see a similar project somewhere in California! Of course, we'd also love to see more rain.
Read more about Boston's secret rainy day poetry here.
Image Credit: Flickr User jon_a_ross, https://flic.kr/p/7YM2uJ via (CC BY-ND 2.0)