Raining Poetry Project

“This will be a celebration of rainy weather, something to enjoy rather than to avoid. Our weather here is unpredictable and rarely sunny for long. Rainy weather brings locals and tourists alike out of the woods and into town, and when they come, they will be greeted with poetry at their feet.”

“Coming Soon to a Sidewalk Near You”, Adirondack Daily Enterprise

About the Raining Poetry Project

Throughout summer of 2021, all are invited to visit Saranac Lake on a rainy day to see the reveal of poems selected by the community. Poems will be painted throughout downtown at Town Hall, Saranac Lake Free Library, Berkley Green, Saranac Lake Post Office, and the Saranac Lake Skate Park. Parking is available in public lots throughout town with a short walk to visit the poems.

Check out Raining Poetry in the media at Adirondack Almanck, Adirondack Daily Enterprise, and Lake Champlain Weekly.

The Raining Poetry Project features these poems, selected by the public for the 2021 display:

• The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman
• A Pretty Song by Mary Oliver
• #DearWorld by Mahogany L. Browne
• Abuelo, Mi Muerto by Aracelis Girmay
• Rain by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Frequently the wood are pink by Emily Dickinson

https://youtu.be/gtWyDQ3UgUk

Have questions about visiting Raining Poetry? Contact Baylee here.

About the poem & history of cinquain for Mt. Marcy

from poet mary sanders shartle

“My verse, “Cinquain for Mt. Marcy,” now happily appears in front of the post office in Saranac Lake, visible only when it rains. This is appropriate since the verse is based on the body of water called Tear of the Clouds, the headwaters of the Hudson River on the slopes of Mount Marcy, the highest of the High Peaks. The shallow little lake was named by Verplanck Colvin who surveyed the Adirondacks in the late 1800s and began New York’s movement to preserve these precious Adirondack lands and waters now known as the Adirondack State Park. “Tear” in Tear of the Clouds could be pronounced like a tear of sadness or mourning, or “tear” as a rip in fabric. I had heard one from Adirondackers and the other from non-Adirondackers, so I added the two-syllable lines: “mourning” and “rending” to begin and end the verse accommodating those who know the vulnerability and importance of the High Peaks terrain and those visitors who may not.

The cinquain (cinq for “five”) usually unrhymed lines of two syllables, four, six, eight and returning again to two syllables respectively) is analogous to the Japanese tanka and haiku. The variation of the cinquain is a uniquely local form used by Adelaide Crapsey (1878-1914), who spent the last year of her life in Saranac Lake, She used this cinquain form as a powerfully concise expression as, at age thirty-four, she faced the enormity of her impending death from tuberculosis. Tuberculosis, like COVID 19, was one of the most contagious deadly disease known to humans and still remains at the top of that chart.

Here’s one of Adelaide’s cinquains possibly written when, seeking a cure here, she suffered through three painful pneumothoracic treatments to collapse one of her lungs:

         Langour After Pain

         Pain ebbs

         And like cool balm

         An opiate weariness

         Settles on eye-lids, on relaxed

         Pale wrists.

I dedicate my poem “Cinquain for Mt. Marcy” as a memorial to Adelaide Crapsey. It was science that produced the streptomycin that ultimately cured TB (too late to save her). It will be science that figures out how to cure this present pandemic. 

“Cinquain for Mt. Marcy”  first appeared in a book of poems, Tear of the Clouds (Ra Press, 2010), by Elaine Handley, Marilyn McCabe and myself. We have collaborated on several books of poetry on shared themes of life in the Adirondacks in three unique voices. Individually and together, the Three Poets have won multiple awards from the Adirondack Center for Writing.  

I want to thank Nathalie Thill and Baylee Annis for the wonderful idea of the “Raining Poetry Project.” I praise and urge continued support for art in public places. Poets, writers and artists have always found solace and peace here. The arts are part of the fabric and history of this region. ACW is a vital part of this community and  has long had my support. I urge everyone who reads this and these sidewalk poems to do the same.

If you want to know more about Adelaide Crapsey, and other women writers of the Adirondacks, I recommend Kate H. Winter’s book, The Woman in the Mountain (SUNY Press, 1989), and I bet the Saranac Lake Free Library has a book called ‘Verses by Adelaide Crapsey’ in its archives. When you go there, in the rain, look for yet another poem in the series! Hanif Abdurraqib’s “How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This?” It’s amazing how timely all of these “Raining Poetry” poems are. Enjoy and ponder!”