Poetry in Motion

Getting stuck on the C-1 totally blows. For those 10 unbearable minutes each day, as you’re pressed up against a gaggle of randos who egregiously invade your personal space, your day goes quickly from bad to worse. It’s always a lose-lose. You’re either condemned to a crushing period of silence, or forced to cough out awkward small talk with people to whom you’d normally never speak. At this moment, we could all use a little salvation.

The bus gods—that is, Professor Deborah Pope, Vice-Provost for the Arts Scott Lindroth and the Transportation Office—have come up with a solution: poetry.

Starting this semester, the placard space above the handrails—real estate usually reserved for staid ads for the Duke Annual Fund or off-base attempts to curb student fun—will feature verses of poesy, providing students with a reprieve from the reality of their unenviable situations. Soon enough, haggard bio majors will be able to board their pitifully glum C-4 back to their pitifully glum Central Campus crash pad and take pleasure in reading the words of a laureate. They’ll be transported to Coleridge’s Xanadu; watch the fleeting Nightingale next to a brooding Keats; relish Whitman’s fierce vision of America. The possibilities are endless. And therefore, with hopes that the power of verse can make even the most mundane ride meaningful, I formally endorse poetry on the Duke buses.