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A newsletter for the neighbors of the University of California, Berkeley |
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Spring 2002 |
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| Talking the walk on Addison Street: On city's new arts corridor, verse will line the way By Janet Huseby |
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| As former Poet Laureate of the United States, winner of the MacArthur "genius" Fellowship and two-time winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, UC Berkeley Professor of English Robert Hass has earned a number of impressive honors. Yet he's perfectly willing to be known as "pedestrian" if it promotes his passion for poetry. This summer, Berkeley's new Downtown Arts District, centered on Addison Street, will begin installing poetry into the sidewalk. The poems will be engraved on 100 square enameled slabs. The squares are part of a path that meanders past Berkeley Rep, the new Freight and Salvage, Capoeira Café, the Aurora Theater and Berkeley Jazz School. Berkeley printer and artist David Goines selected the typeface and color. Hass selected the poems for final review by the Civic Arts Commission. As a native northern Californian - born in San Francisco, bred in Marin County - and a Berkeley resident since the early '70s, Hass is well suited to the task. "My idea is to do poetry that is somehow related to UC Berkeley and the culture of northern California - which casts a fairly wide net," he says. He ticks off some of his choices: Ohlone Indian Songs - one at each of the street's four corners; Mexican ranchero ballads; Spanish poetry of protest following the War of 1846; translations by Cal professors of classical Chinese poetry; Oakland blues brought up from Texas by African Americans during World War II; and even the lyrics of the Grateful Dead - whose guitarist, Phil Lesh, attended Berkeley High. Hass includes "Oh My Darling Clementine," first published in 1884. The author is identified as Percy Montrose, about whom nothing is known, but the song contains the familiar words "dwelt a miner, forty-niner." Then Hass suggests "The Purple Cow." Few people, he points out, know that Gelett Burges was an instructor in topographical drawing at UC Berkeley when he penned his famous rhyme: I never saw a purple cow, Even fewer are aware of the follow-up that Burges authored after moving to New York in 1898. Ah, yes, I wrote the Purple Cow" - "The town has always been full of scholars," Hass says on a more serious note. The famed Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980 while living in exile in the Berkeley hills. Allen Ginsberg helped launch the Beat generation with his first book, "Howl," published during the few years he spent in the Bay Area. Ginsberg came to Berkeley to attend graduate school at Cal, but dropped out after a few weeks. Malka Heifetz-Tussman, who was the last Yiddish language poet to receive the Itsik Manger Prize for poetry in Tel Aviv, spent her final years in Berkeley, where her son was a professor of philosophy. Hass recites by heart Tussman's poem "Keep Me": Keep me from saying right now in the ripeness of my years. Hass slows for a moment, savoring the sentiment. One of the poems Hass wants to include was written in 1752 by the Irish-born Bishop of the Church of England, George Berkeley, after whom the campus and the city are named. Titled "Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in the New World," the poem includes the famous phrase "Westward the course of empire takes its way." It also paints a glowing picture of a future that the university and the city can aspire to: There shall be sung another golden age, Most of the $100,000-plus project is being funded by Berkeleys Measure S, which set aside tax money for public art downtown. Funding was supplemented by private contributions, including one from UC Berkeley's Office of the Chancellor. Hass agreed to select the poems pro bono - in return for a commitment from the city that he would not have to attend any committee meetings. The city is hoping eventually to collaborate on an accompanying booklet, "The Addison Anthology," which will include the poems and explanations as to why they were selected. For information or to contribute to the Sidewalk Poetry project, call Berkeley Civic Arts Coordinator Mary Ann Merker at (510) 705-8183. |
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Robert Hass
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Sidewalk poems
Here are two poems that poet Robert Hass selected for the Addison Street project, along with commentary from Hass. |
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