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UD’s ambivalent about…

… tampering with visual stuff in metro stations and cars. She doesn’t seem to mind just a little tampering on occasion. Not all-out defacement! But – you know – say you take out your black pen and fill in just one of a big smiling set of teeth. Is that so horrible?

So a couple of college students in New York, depressed by a poem prominently installed in a subway tunnel (it was meant stay up there for a year, but never got taken down) climbed a ladder last week and rewrote it. They didn’t write a whole new poem; with great care, they used the poem as written, but tweaked it to be upbeat.

Here’s the original poem. A draggy little ditty about the miserable working life of the commuter. A major downer inside a derelict subway tunnel. Makes the Russians look giddy.

Is it so horrible that these two felt moved to subvert its words? UD applauds their literary ingenuity, and she notes that the new poem, as of this writing, remains on the wall.

Margaret Soltan, November 30, 2011 12:19PM
Posted in: poem

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3 Responses to “UD’s ambivalent about…”

  1. Stephen Karlson Says:

    “Sounds of Silence” anticipated this?

  2. Anonymous Says:

    The quote from the poet’s widow is just so perfect! “Be realistic – life sucks!” Thanks, poetry!

  3. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Yes – I loved that.

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UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
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George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
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It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
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University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
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[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
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Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
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