“Let the Beauty We Love Be What We Do“: Poetry Trail in Greenway Meadows | Princeton, New Jersey

Abstract

5 poetry trails 32 World Literature Today Let the Beauty We Love Be What We Do” Poetry Trail in Greenway Meadows | Princeton, New Jersey Scott McVay Scott McVay’s initiative on behalf of poetry, the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, has brought poetry to millions since 1986. His book of poetry, Whales Sing and Other Exuberances, appeared in 2012. McVay has served on several boards, including the World Wildlife Fund and the Earth Policy Institute. His honors include the Albert Schweitzer Award from the Animal Welfare Institute and the Joseph Wood Krutch medal from the Humane Society of the United States. Hella McVay was born in Berlin-Köpenick, earned an advanced degree in mathematics at the Free University of Berlin, and worked for Princeton University in the Fine Hall Mathematics Library and later assisted Professor Alonzo Church with The Journal of Symbolic Logic. She taught mathematics for twenty-five years and has served on the board of D&R Greenway Land Trust since 1994. “ I n 2001 the former Robert Wood Johnson estate was on the verge of being developed when all sixty acres were spared. A spectacular fifty-five rolling acres were designated Green Meadows. In late 2009, Princeton Township passed a resolution in appreciation of a plan my wife, Hella, and I had submitted to create a poetry trail in Greenway Meadows. Our motivation sprang from our love of land and a desire to make a gift to the community in thanks for the joy of living in a university town and raising our daughters, Catherine and Cynthia, here. We are aware of the link between the artist and the natural world, and this is manifest in the quarterly exhibitions of visual art held at the Greenway Land Trust. We thought the Poetry Trail offered a rare opportunity to make this connection, too. To accomplish this we chose poems from many lands and cultures reaching back two millennia. The aim of the trail is to feature the ineffable in poetry, something of the beauty, surprise, awe, mystery, seasonality, and timelessness of nature. On the sign for each poem we chose a beautiful , textured color band running down the left side like the spine of a book. With Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem— Walk around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble any second. Then decide what to do with your time. —we chose an antique red stripe. Seven cedar benches, handcrafted by David Robinson, provide an opportunity for reflection near some of the longer poems and are placed taking the view into account. On October 17, 2010, the trail was dedicated with many poets reading their poems, each introduced by saxophonist Paul Winter who has in a thousand ways captured the songs of Mother Earth. Of that glorious day, dotted with sparkling images including poetry flags fluttering in the Sunday-afternoon breeze, Michelle Knapik, an environmental grant-maker, wrote a blog, “Speaking of Nature”: “The magic of the day has been made timeless thanks to the Poetry Trail installation. The trail, a collection of forty-eight poems dotting a gentle 1.5-mile trail, is a gift from the McVays that seems a perfect expression of their love for each other, their shared love of arts and culture, and their desire to inspire connections between people and the natural world.” Diane Churchhill, an artist, added: “The Poetry Trail stands out most strongly for its understated beauty and homage to both the word and the land. They were married so well. While reading each poem, the words seem to flow out and into the landscape, altering it slightly. The long gazes seem to attach to thoughts about the poems. If I lived nearby, I would be there often and it would be like an ongoing liturgy of experiencing the sacred” (May 25, 2012). On a wintry day in February 2011, a threeyear -old boy was standing with his grandmother before the Rumi sign in the Allee of Sycamores: Let the beauty we love be what we do, There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. She had no sooner read these words than he dropped to the ground and kissed the ice and snow. An emeritus...