NYC uses Haiku to bring Poetry to the Streets

by Lynnda
with added 12/22 P.S. from aleks

What a surprise to stumble upon a story about New York City and the use of haiku to provide traffic safety reminders.  This article was aired on December 3, 2011 on NPR's Weekend Edition.  Each haiku is accompanied by boldly colored graphics to illustrate the potential problems of inattention to the warnings. 

Artist John Morse designed 12 signs for display around the five boroughs.  Here are three of the signs.  To see the full story, and see all of the signs, follow this link: haiku in NYC

    John Morse/NYC DOT

 
"One of the joys of doing this sort of thing is how many people have responded to it with their own haiku," Morse says. "There's just a plethora of haiku coming out. It's so exciting."

Haiku is traditionally thought of as Japanese poetry that involves imagery of nature and how that is experienced by the poet.  The standard haiku has three lines and a total of 17 syllables, usually in a 5-7-5 rhythm.

If you feel creative, write your own haiku and leave it as a comment!
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P.S. from aleks:  Metro Transit Seattle had a long lasting (1992-2007) public art project 'Poetry on Buses', which started with haiku form, I believe, then moved into more free form.  Here are links to:
 • Seattle Weekly 2007 article about 'Poetry on Buses'  by Rachel Shimp
• King County Metro Transit archive of 'Poetry on Buses'  1997-2007 - enjoy!