Harrison Stop- Haiku writings

Students from Columbia College and Jones Prep College decided to come together and display poetry and some Haiku writings in Chicago's subway; the Harrison stop. As you go down the stairs entering into the subway you see the walls filled with huge font and bright tiles of white, green, orange and red. Some of the poetry was good and with others I thought to myself," What does it have to do with haiku or poetry at all".

One poem said, "Fleet through the night, Lips pressed against the dark, I can feel the sound. That's one that made me visulize night/darkness and the sounds you hear and feel when it turns dark. A poem written by Jones Prep college said, "Why do people get off at Clark and Lake? It's not as great as it seems. By reading that I didn't even take the time to anaylze it, I just walked away and read another until I came across another ridiculous poem. It said, "Because of one missing sock, I had to change my outfit; and this one was writtin by a Columbia College student.

I understand that the creative writting poetry program was trying to do something different and creative and to maybe get the community involved as well but where they advertised it wasn't the smartest idea. Why would you advertise it in a subway and of all subway's why the Harrison stop? The Harrison has to be the dangerous, nastiest, smelliest subway filled with water and dirt. People catching the train aren't going to be concerned about what writing is on the wall when the walls were horrible and peeling apart anyway. The people going to and from the train where more curious to what we were doing. Why we had pens and papers and taking picture's on our cell phone. I'm surprised that CTA let them do this. Maybe they wanted to see if it would succeed or not. In the Chicago Tribune a reporter stated, "This is a very important piece of the community in the South Loop," said Columbia President Warrick Carter. "We're glad that the CTA is working with us as we help britghten our neighborhood...as our neighborhood bloosms and blooms ( by Karoun Demirjian, Jan 31,2008).

This project was a great idea but it needed a little more research and maybe help from more outside sources. The color's sure did brigthen up the community but in a horrible way. The colors seemed to clash with one another and it would have been best to get a student from Columbia to actually paint the walls. I don't think it's helping the neighborhood blossom, I think that the neighborhood could really care less. I think overall they should have done a rough draft and then came to a final conclusion, found a different location, change the colors, make the font smaller so more poetry could fit on the walls. It was very successful just with extra planning it could have been better.