What Would Carvin Write?

Carvin was a sidewalk marker.  He might still be a sidewalk marker, though it's not important.  What matters is that time in Carvin's career when he was not only a marker but a poet - a man who not only indicated gas lines, electric lines and sewer mains but told the story of the universe in fifty orange words or less.

Public words mean public works.

The brevity of a poem is inversely proportional to its power - assuming it is well written.  Five words can say nothing at all, suggest the meaning of existence or spell out the meaning of denial... maybe even all three of those things, at once.  Carvin got his viewers to travel that road, or stroll that sidewalk his way, with his words but living in their thoughts.  He wasn't just a good poet - destined to be unread and unremembered but a great poet - destined to be unread but familiar to those with a college education.

Underlie the lines that are you.

Badly written poetry is the stuff of every high school kid's journal and as such suffers the same fate as all poetry - to remain unread.  The remarkable thing about Carvin was not just the quality of what he wrote but the fact that he got people to read it - by spray painting it on the spaces outside their homes, restaurants and pet stores.  Not everyone - okay almost no one - notices what sidewalk markers write but once someone notices that it's not just locations, distances and utility names then everyone reads it.

Locate 10 feet from sidewalk.