Poets Offer Voice and Verse to Audiences at Bus Stops

What rhymes with sardine?

Passengers who encountered poets Monday at Los Angeles bus stops found that the answer wasn’t sublime.

Poets used a bullhorn to spout poetry to unsuspecting riders waiting to crowd onto buses on Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood.

“You’re a captive audience--you can’t get away unless you want to walk to work,” joked poet Jan Wesley as she launched into a Langston Hughes poem titled “Luck.”

It was passenger Angie Chi’s luck that her eastbound bus lurched into view before Wesley could start a second poem.

Instead of sweeping cadence, they ought to be sweeping coaches, said Chi, a student who lives in Westwood.

“The buses are a little dirty,” she said as she climbed onto hers.

Monday’s readings were conducted by members of the Poetry Society of America, who are visiting some of the city’s busiest bus stops for rush-hour recitations as part of National Poetry Month.

More than two dozen local poets have volunteered to read at bus stops and subway stations the next two Mondays, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The readings are an outgrowth of a yearlong program called “Poetry in Motion” that includes the placement of poem posters inside 2,200 MTA buses.

Wesley, a freelance film editor from Los Feliz, was joined at the corner of Wilshire and Westwood boulevards by poets Jim Natel, a Marina del Rey sportswriter, and Richard Beban, a screenwriter from Venice. Like all of Monday’s bus stop poets, they wore orange MTA vests to distinguish themselves from others who rant and rave from street corners.

Beban hurried through an Edward Field poem called “Magic Words,” glancing over his shoulder at approaching traffic. “Bus coming yet? Nope. We have time for one more quick one,” he told the waiting crowd.

Most were pleased to experience a little curbside culture.

“It was great, awesome!” shouted office worker Robert Mazzola of Culver City as he disappeared into a downtown-bound bus.

Miriam Ramirez of El Monte was also appreciative. “It’s getting my day off to a good start,” said the receptionist, who works downtown.

George Frazier, a workers’ compensation claims adjuster for UCLA, was likewise cheered by the poem that welcomed him as he stepped from the bus he had ridden from Redondo Beach. “This is very cool. This brings a sparkle--it brightens the day,” he said.

MTA arts administrator Maya Emsden said she wasn’t certain what to expect at 8 a.m. when the volunteer poem readers were scheduled to begin. “Maybe poets choose their careers so they don’t have to get up at 7 in the morning,” she said.

Emsden said most of the Monday readings would take place between 4 and 6 p.m. Along with the Westwood site, poets were scheduled to be at Vermont Avenue and 3rd Street, Roscoe and Van Nuys boulevards, King and Crenshaw boulevards, the Fox Hills Mall Transit Center, the El Monte Transit Center and 7th Street Metro Center.

At the downtown 7th Street center, early morning poets came under scrutiny of transit security guards before officers realized they were MTA-sanctioned, said Elena Karina Byrne, a Rancho Palos Verdes writer who heads the Los Angeles chapter of the poets society. Before the hour was up, passersby were shouting out random words for poet Jeffrey McDaniel to rhyme and fashion into poems, she said.

Back at the stop on Wilshire Boulevard, Beban recited the English-language version of “Variations” by Federico Garcia Lorca before passenger Gladys Requena read the Spanish-language version from a piece of paper he supplied.

Just then, bus driver Reggie Harris pulled up in his westbound bus and Requena, of Los Angeles, climbed aboard for the remainder of her trip to Brentwood, where she works as a nanny.

Harris invited Beban inside to read a poem. “I’m early. I’ve got a couple of minutes,” Harris said.

Requena thanked everyone when the bus finally pulled away. “You gave me a sweet day,” she said.

To the wordsmiths left standing on the corner, that was poetry.