Local Poets Get on Track

Seven poets jumped on the Gold Line train

To banish the afternoon gloom.

It’s National Poetry Month, they said.

We’re here to spice your trip with verse.

Singing bards on board, now this was a first.

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The sound of sonnets replaced the usual silence aboard the commuter train Thursday, with Southern California poets reading as part of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Poetry in Motion project. Though poets had serenaded riders on the Red and Blue lines earlier this month, this was their first time aboard the Gold Line, which runs from Union Station to Pasadena.

Poetry in Motion, a national project co-sponsored by the Poetry Society of America, began in Los Angeles in 1998. Posters of two new poems -- everything from Inuit poetry to Langston Hughes -- also appear on MTA buses every two months.

The project takes the art-house stuffiness out of poetry and brings verse to a wider audience, said poet Elena Karina Byrne, who organizes the project and read Pablo Neruda to commuters Thursday.

Mostly, she explained, people smile, reach out for the poetry bookmarks she is distributing or offer to read their own work. Only once, said Byrne, did she encounter hostility. Two years ago, on a Red Line train, she asked a pack of teenage girls if they wanted to hear a poem. One stepped forward and told her to get off the train in expletive-laden language.

But she and the others said they were undeterred. They are driven to share words with people who might not frequent the coffeehouses or theaters where poets usually read, Byrne said.

The 20 readers are paid $100 each for their two-hour shifts and the posters are part of the regular MTA printing budget, said Maya Emsden, who oversees the authority’s creative services.

“It’s not enough to provide a vehicle that goes from point A to point B,” she said. “People might say, ‘Oh, it’s going to be grimy, or unpleasant, or who wants to sit on a bus.’ But if we make the ride and make the interior of a bus more pleasant, we’ll encourage ridership.” Emsden said she could tell riders liked the poetry. The posters are “stolen frequently enough that you can tell it’s a popular program,” she said. “They’re not so much taking the ads in the buses that say, ‘Call this lawyer for your injury.’ ”

Emsden estimated at least 100 posters were snatched each month.

Randy Carter took off his headphones when the poets climbed aboard his Sierra Madre-bound train at Union Station about 3:15 p.m. on Thursday. When Antonieta Villamil leaned against a pole and began reading her poem, “Letter to the Brother that Went to War” in English and Spanish, he listened.

Carter, who rides six days a week between downtown Los Angeles and Pasadena, said he usually listens to music and watches the buildings pass on his ride home.

“This is good,” he said, pointing to Villamil, as she struck a conga chiquita, a small drum, for emphasis. “That,” he said, pointing to the blurry landscape outside his window, “I can see tomorrow.”

But Marion Melchiorre, who stayed at the South Pasadena station on Mission Street after getting off her train to listen to the poets, said poetic entertainment wasn’t enough to make her ride the Metro more frequently. Though she would like to ride public transportation more often, Melchiorre said she found the lack of parking at Mission Street and the bus transfer at Union Station inconvenient.

“Plus, my daughter had her bike stolen at the Metro,” the Alhambra resident added. “That makes you feel discouraged.”