The Best of Poetry in Motion
Celebrating Twenty-Five Years on Subways and Buses
“Poems once in motion…continue to move their readers. And what an imaginative variety of poetic delights is offered here.”—Billy Collins
It would have pleased Walt Whitman, that poet of urban motion, to envision
his words coursing by electrified rail through a diverse, global city of 8 million souls.
Since 1992, with the presentation of an excerpt from Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” the Poetry in Motion program—co-sponsored by MTA Arts & Design and the Poetry Society of America—has brought more than 200 poems, in whole or in part, before the eyes of millions of subway and bus riders, offering a moment of timelessness in the busy day. The poems are by an eclectic mix of writers, from Sappho and Sylvia Plath…