Project Management
Rita Dove Poem at Folger Shakespeare Library
"One of the great things about working on the Folger project was that we would pass former Poet Laureate Rita Dove’s poem as we entered the building. The poem, etched in marble along a garden edge, advocates passersby to “Clear your calendars. Pocket your notes. Look up into the blue amplitude”—good advice to anyone working in the trenches of a construction project. It was a prescient reminder to look beyond the day-to-day coordination challenges and see a broader horizon.
As someone who was once involved in public art (and whose projects at B&F have included several public artworks), it personally gave me great pleasure to be involved with this aspect of the project. We also believe that it is the only contemporary artwork on Capitol Hill."
- Managing Partner, Charlie Moleski
Featured Image © Alan Karchmer
Here is the poem in all its perfection. Enjoy!
Clear your calendars. Pocket your notes.
Look up into the blue amplitudes,
sun lolling on his throne, watching clouds
scrawl past, content with going nowhere.
No chart can calibrate the hush that settles
just before the first cricket song rises;
no list will recall a garden’s embroidery,
its fringed pinks and reds, its humble hedges.
Every day is Too Much or Never Enough,
so stop fretting your worth and berating
the cosmos – step into a house where
the jumbled perfumes of our human potpourri
waft up from a single page.
You can feel the world stop, lean in, and listen
as your heart starts up again.
– Rita Dove
More information can be found on the following links:
https://www.folger.edu/blogs/folger-story/a-new-poem-by-rita-dove-invites-visitors-inside/
https://www.folger.edu/visit/our-building-and-grounds/rita-dove-poem-for-the-west-garden-entry/
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