OF LINES AND POETRY

By CALVIN TRILLIN

I hate to sound like an author boasting about how enthusiastically his book was received. It is a fact, though, that a friend of mine who lives in Miami once told me that the pieces in a collection of columns I'd just published were a perfect length for the wait experienced by motorists when one of those drawbridges on the Intercoastal Waterway goes up to let a boat through.

I thought of my friend's observation recently when I read a story in the Washington Post reporting that a man named Andrew Carroll has been handing out cheap editions of The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe, to motorists waiting in line at a District of Columbia vehicle-inspection station--a line in which, I think it's safe to assume, people must sometimes get the impression that the drawbridge is never going to go back down.

Several years ago, after hearing Joseph Brodsky, then the poet laureate of the U.S., say poetry should be more broadly available in this country, Carroll was inspired to found an organization called the American Poetry & Literacy Project. The idea was to get relatively light and accessible poetry into the hands of ordinary Americans. Carroll's own wait at a vehicle-inspection station apparently convinced him that he had found a place where people are so hungry for distraction that they would welcome a copy of Paradise Lost, even if it came accompanied by the possibility of an unannounced quiz at any one of the class sessions before Thanksgiving break.

Without some poetry to dip into, after all, those in line at a vehicle-inspection station would presumably spend their time drumming impatiently on their steering wheels, muttering imprecations against bureaucracy and trying to decide whether the sound of their idling engine included a faint but ominous ping.

Carroll also intends to make poetry available to people in less desperate straits. He has plans to extend his distribution efforts to Delta Airlines flights and Amtrak trains leaving Washington. He chose The Raven for Halloween. Around Valentine's Day, he'll distribute love poems.

I'm all for his policy of practicing what I believe the literary critics call seasonal coordination. I can imagine A Visit from St. Nicholas given away in December. The Canterbury Tales might be handed out in April--unless April has been the cruelest month that year, in which case motorists would be left to sit in their station wagons staring blankly at The Waste Land.

But if poetry is going to match the season, why shouldn't it match the situation as well? People waiting for a Delta flight may long for some existential couplet like, "Why is it I always feel desperately lonely/When agents announce, 'This is preboarding only'?" Motorists waiting in the vehicle-inspection line who find The Raven enjoyable enough around Halloween may actually prefer a poem such as Contemplations on the Expatriate Life:

I know this country's been uniquely blessed. But as I sit dejected, bored, depressed, I wonder if a strict emissions test Is part of life in Rome, or Budapest.

Maybe competitions could be held for literary material focused on each of the most familiar waits Americans put up with--driver's-license renewals, rock-concert ticket lines. Not drawbridge waits. That's been taken care of.