"Cambridge woman drops poems around the MBTA"

From the 1/23/13 issue of Metro Boston:

After the Sandy Hook shootings, Cambridge Resident Jen Bonardi was inspired by a national campaign that called for "26 acts of kindness," but she couldn't figure out how to go about doing it.  

She handed out $26 worth of Dunkin' Donuts gift cards to strangers, but when that didn't hit the spot, she came up with the idea for "26 Acts of Poetry." 

Last week Bonardi threw 26 folded poems on trains throughout the MBTA. 

"I hope I didn't freak anybody out" she said. 

The poems are written by 26 different poets, including Boston slam poet Erich Haygun, and each was dedicated to a Sandy Hook child or teacher who died. 

Bonardi's blog asks those who find poems to reach out and share their feelings. So far, she has heard from two T riders, but she hopes more messages will come. 

"Sometimes you don't believe you've touched someone until you've heard from them," she said."

EVERSON IN POETRY, MAZER ON EVERSON

Poetry's website relaunch has made the back issue contents more easily available than ever before... such contents as Landis Everson's poem from the October 2006 issue, "What's Wrong":

What you are struggling with," said
the psychologist, "is
a continuous song, something like
a telephone's tone. [...]

Not serendipitously, but sadly, I came across two poems written in memoriam for Everson while reading this  Saturday, and a third in Stephen Sturgeon's Trees of the Twentieth Century when a friend and I were paging through and talking about the collection on Sunday.

I think of a short poem by Greg Delanty:

For many are not here who were here before.

In Dark Sky Magazine last month, Ben Mazer wrote about his relationship with Landis, and how his collection January, 2008 grew out of the grief he felt when the older poet died in 2007.