Description:
From the lobby of Jackson Square Station, take a left and exit the building, heading away from Centre Street. Beyond the benches you'll see a tall concrete pillar, standing on its own. This pillar contains both a poem and a piece of prose. The pillar itself is in good shape, the the text is quite worn - the prose is completely illegible as is the bottom third of the poem.
About the Author:
Christopher Gilbert has a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in Psychology, the latter two received at Clark University in Worcester. Available information, from the 1990s, has Gilbert teaching and practicing psychology, most recently as a professor at Bristol Community College in Fall River. He is also a successful poet, winning the Walt Whitman Poetry Award in 1983 for his collection, Across the Mutual Landscape. His poetry was largely influenced by jazz rhythms and was considered a major force in the community of African American poetry. His poetry has been featured in numerous magazines and anthologies, most recently in Approaching Literature in the 20th Century(2005).
Response:
I had visited Jackson Square Station before, only briefly, without any sightings of a monument. As I exited the station, searching for a concrete pillar, I was confronted with splashes of color coming from all directions. Every concrete pillar was covered in a mural that, I assumed, was a contribution from the community. In the distance, removed from the colorful bus stop, I saw the granite slab containing the poem I had been looking for.
Walking up to the monument, I wondered how often others ventured from the station to view this public art. I found myself longing to be back at the station, further investigating the visibly arresting paintings. How many times had a commuter faced this same dilemma? How many times had the monument lost?
After reading Christ Gilbert's poem, Any Good Throat, I was glad that I had pulled myself away from the paintings. However, I was disappointed to find that I could not read the last third of the poem because the text had been worn away and was practically impossible to read. The poem describes a 15-year-old boy named Willie at a neighborhood basketball court on a hot July day; a common scene in an urban neighborhood. Willie is described as someone who is marginalized by the poem's "we": he wants a summer job and has a "sharp need in his gut," but is instead given a basketball to play on "this tarred-over earth burned and raped and cheated of growth." This description of a youth on the edge of being lost is particularly haunting as one looks over at the Bromley-Heath Housing Project (visible from the monument), which has been racked with gang violence as of late.
By Lauren Chrystal.
