Got a poem? Leave a poem! Need a poem? Take a poem!

November 19, 2024 6:06 PM

During the pandemic, the town of Bremerton, Washington installed a little Take A Poem, Leave A Poem box. Liminal Garrett bemoaned the fact that there's never any poems to take. So they took the box's plight to the internet: use this form to send them a poem, they'll print it out and put it in the box for others to take!
posted by JHarris (15 comments total)

Echoes of the old Usenet Oracle!

I actually loved answering oracle questions a lot more than asking them, so I would frequently help drain the imbalance queue.
posted by notoriety public at 6:12 PM on November 19, 2024 [2 favorites]

I love this!
posted by corb at 6:21 PM on November 19, 2024 [1 favorite]

I have submitted a poem. Thank you!
posted by brook horse at 7:30 PM on November 19, 2024 [4 favorites]

I submitted one as well, a nursery rhyme ode to my long-departed cat Sara, which I originally wrote on the anniversary of her passing. She was my first pet as an adult, a serendipitous (hence her name) stray in the backyard of a friend of mine who knew I was looking for a cat.
posted by notoriety public at 7:36 PM on November 19, 2024 [4 favorites]

Oh I got poems, you betcha
This is a nice thing
posted by winesong at 9:38 PM on November 19, 2024 [2 favorites]

I've sent them one about dinosaurs.
posted by Paul Slade at 12:12 AM on November 20, 2024 [3 favorites]

I rewrote "This is Just to Say" as a bredlik months ago, and never found a wonderful audience for it, so some poetry-lover is going to be subjected to it now.
posted by jackbishop at 4:07 AM on November 20, 2024 [3 favorites]

notoriety public, I'd like to see the nursery rhyme cat poem some time.
posted by JHarris at 9:10 AM on November 20, 2024 [1 favorite]

To clarify, the submitted poems need to be originals? Or can we send existing poems that we like?
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 9:24 AM on November 20, 2024

They don't specify, but I assume anything goes! There's something nice about sending a poem you wrote yourself, but there's lots of things you could use.
posted by JHarris at 10:04 AM on November 20, 2024 [1 favorite]

The form says "your own poetry", I_Love_Bananas. But it doesn't say it has to be good. Mine was extremely silly and I hope it makes someone smile (or groan).
posted by EvaDestruction at 10:58 AM on November 20, 2024 [3 favorites]

Aaah, I must have missed that part. It is nicer to submit something you made yourself.
posted by JHarris at 11:20 AM on November 20, 2024

This is true: Some time in the mid, probably 1960s, my grandmother had just gotten divorced for the second time. She was raising three kids (my mom and my two uncles) on a single income, and she sat down to write a poem just to encapsulate (I'm guessing) all the frustration and despair. (She was always a huge fan of Dorothy Parker. My grandma had a lot of dark wit.)

Anyway, she ended up with this:

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
if immortality unveil
a third event to me.

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
as these that twice befell:
Loving is all we know of heaven,
and all we need of hell.


I don't think she ever tried to submit it anywhere, she just wrote it in a journal. But it was good, so she also remembered it. Years and years later, maybe in the 80s at some point, she was startled to find her own poem being referenced on a tv show. She tuned in late or missed something, but she heard the lines and she was absolutely astounded, and couldn't believe it. That was her poem!

Years after that, when the internet was finally invented, she realized she could look it up, and so she typed the lines into a search engine, and discovered something you might already have realized, if you're a fan of Emily Dickinson, namely that this is one of Dickinson's poems, though the original ends "Parting is all we know of heaven, / and all we need of hell."

So, you know, the difference between an original poem and an existing one may be smaller than you think, at times.
posted by heyitsgogi at 11:29 AM on November 20, 2024 [2 favorites]

Mod note: I have such good memories of Bremerton! Thank you for posting this, JHarris! We've added this poetic post to the sidebar and Best Of blog!
posted by loup (staff) at 2:03 PM on November 21, 2024 [1 favorite]

There's an update on the success of the submission form.
posted by EvaDestruction at 8:47 AM on December 2, 2024 [2 favorites]