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The Virtual World

Poetry, the imagination, and the creative life.

Friday, December 29, 2006

Julian Aiken, a reference and technology librarian, recently introduced "Poetry in the Lavatory." Every few days, he changes the poems mounted above the urinal and on the stall walls in the men's room and on the stall walls in the women's room of the library's public restrooms.

He changes the women's room poems early in the morning or has a female librarian do it for him.

"Poetry is something the whole library staff is interested in," Aiken said. "We really want people to read poetry and get interested in it. It gets people thinking about poetry while they're in there doing something else."
Posted by Peter at 7:04 AM
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2 comments:

Anne Haines said...

I love it!

December 29, 2006 12:08 PM
Anonymous said...

I love it, too!

I saw poetry on the NYC subway and it sure beat staring at an ad for 10 stops.

December 29, 2006 8:08 PM

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Poetry can communicate before it is understood. ~T. S. Eliot

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Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. ~ Plato

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A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. ~ Salman Rushdie

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Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason. ~ Novalis

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Poetry is what maintains our capacity for contemplation and difficulty. — Carolyn Forche

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Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild. — Denis Diderot

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Sometimes something wants to be said, sometimes a way of saying wants to be used. — Paul ValĂ©ry

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