DUKE UNIVERSITY (bridge between East and West campuses)
Durham, North Carolina, September 23, 2001

In March 2001, my (Amy Carroll's) teacher Archie Ammons died. His death followed my visit to IN-SITE, the collaborative border project located in Tijuana and San Diego. Through my dissertation research I had begun to think about what constituted public and ephemeral art. After visiting IN-SITE, I was energized to think about its relationship to my own writing. As I contemplated returning to Duke University to piece together my dissertation (after having been away for a year and a half doing research), I tried to recall the places on Duke's two campuses that had felt like "home" to me. I could only remember the edges of the university, the places in-between. I thought about the buses that perennially shuttle students from East to West campuses (and back again) and the bridge that is layered with the paint of so many students. That night I dreamt of poems on the bridge as both a tribute to my teacher and as a beginning for my own version of public and collective poetry. In September I was hesitant to initiate the project, then 9-11 and the post- media blitz transpired. All I could "see" was a line from Hamlet, "The time is out of joint." On the 23rd of September, Michael Ennis, Virginia Tuma, and I painted the first installation of P.P.P.. It was an auspicious beginning: French public radio stopped to interview us.
HOW DOES ONE MAKE the HOUSE a HOME?
IN MOLOTOV MOURNING, WHERE DOES THE SADNESS GO?
IF "the time is out of joint," IS IT TIME TO BREAK-IN?
MAY i HAVE THIS DANCE, THE SECONDHAND'S REVOLUTION?

Click here to see the poem.