Local residents give over 1,000 lines to MAX construction

Another type of line is coming into Clackamas County — lines of poetry.

As part of a project called “Orange Lining,” more than 100 verses appeared last month along TriMet’s Orange Line construction of light rail from Portland through Milwaukie to Oak Grove.

Poet Frances Payne Adler’s line, “Carry these words like fold up chairs across time,” appears on a temporary orange silt fencing designed to hinder soil erosion during construction.

Her words will soon be enshrined in concrete sidewalks bordering the MAX trains along with 120 other lines of poetry. Adler points out the metaphor with the light-rail line designed to last decades after construction is completed in 2015.

“I love the idea of words staying around for a really long time and people walking along those words,” Adler said.

Local residents submitted almost 1,100 50 character-or-less poems (spaces counted as characters) for the project. Among those more than 50 artists selected was Greg Chaimov, a Milwaukie city councilor who says he won’t seek re-election to focus on his poetry.

“Into the lilt song into the flashes of red,” conveyed for Chaimov travel into a wetland area where redwing blackbirds sing.

Living in a city founded by orchardists through which there used to be a lot of shipping, Chaimov was inspired by old photos of Milwaukie with horses and carts to write, “The rut a thousand hooves have cut.” He hasn’t seen them pictured exactly where light rail will be.

Putting together lines that couldn’t be longer than 50 characters, but that had enough punch to evoke colors and sounds, was a really intriguing challenge for Chaimov. But he acknowledges that the clincher was probably having his poetry part of a project he supported for his own town.

“Because it was coming into my community, there was certainly a sense of ownership,” Chaimov said. “If the project had been in Hillsboro, would I have I done it? Probably not.”

Commuter experience

In the $1.495 billion project, $4 million has been allocated to public art projects, but Orange Lining is one of the cheaper art projects along the line to produce. The project’s budget is $110,000, which includes design, fabrication and documentation in a website, video and book.

Project leaders stenciled 17-inch-tall lines, running from 24 to 66 feet long, onto 100-foot rolls of silt fencing and delivered them to the construction yard. When construction crews needed fencing, they randomly grabbed a roll, whether it contained a poem or not.

Masons will stamp concrete with the 120 lines of poetry during their normal course of sidewalk construction.

“The intent of this phase is to mark the public expressions of a specific time in history and to acknowledge the public benefit of this substantial infrastructure project,” said TriMet Public Art Coordinator Michelle Traver.

Scot Siegel, who had six lines of poetry selected for the Orange Lining art project, says that other public agencies should follow TriMet’s lead in including public art as part of their transit construction projects.

Siegel has enjoyed the “Poetry In Motion” project, which posts short verses on commuter buses and trains in various cities, including TriMet’s.

“Our attention is so divided these days, between family, handheld technology and busy work schedules, so it’s nice when you can read something short that makes you smile,” he said.

A “strong proponent” of art in public spaces, Siegel is a Lake Oswego contractor serving as interim planning director for the city of Milwaukie. His lines of poetry, more than some of the other writers selected, seem to tap into the psyche of someone riding the train. Examples include, “In daydreams which strangers become friends,” “Some have evolved to commute upright smiling,” and “Everyone is a little more famous on a train.”

“I was trying to capture the experience of a commuter waiting for or riding a MAX train: quiet glimpses into the mind’s eye, moments of personal reflection between origin and destination,” he said.

New routes

As a professional planner, Siegel says he tries to create plans that connect past to present, reconcile different values and serve as roadmaps for common good.

“As a poet, I am free to focus on the individual, raise questions out of order, and leave things unsettled and open to interpretation,” he said. “A poet can — and in fact is obligated to — explore subjects that are forbidden in the workaday world. In this way, poetry can help us maintain balance in our lives. The best poetry blurs the line between everyday life and high art, and moves us to repair the world.”

When Siegel writes, “Here juries of moss and lichen rest in the trees,” he is personifying moss, which is strange because juries, unlike moss and trees, do not rest; juries receive evidence and hear closing arguments.

“But along the Orange Line, trees do have something to say, especially where the scenery shifts abruptly from a tangle of concrete to nature,” he said.