Voting Begins for Subway Poem

The campaign to add Dorothy Parker to the Poetry in Motion program had a successful kickoff event on Monday at the New York Distilling Company, home to Dorothy Parker American Gin. On the final day of National Poetry Month, more than a dozen were on hand to help get a Parker poem into the subway program in New York City. More than 30 poems were read, some from suggestions that came in via email, Facebook and Twitter. After polling the participants, the group came out with 12 finalists to vote on:

A Very Short Song
Distance
Faut De Mieux
One Perfect Rose
Philosophy
Pictures in the Smoke
Prisoner
Sanctuary
Superfluous Advice
The Flaw in Paganism
The Thin Edge
Unfortunate Coincidence

The next step: VOTE HERE for your choice. Please read each poem in contention, and know that it could be a candidate to be in thousands of subway cars and on millions of MetroCards. The background of the campaign is here; this link has the names of past poems/poets that the MTA put on posters from 2003-2008.

Voting will be May 1-June 1. After voting closes, the top two vote-getters will be sent to the Poetry Society, which selects the poems for the MTA. The Dorothy Parker Society will submit the two selected poems it believes have the best chance of being chosen.

Thanks to Allen Katz for the tour of the distilling operation and showing us how gin and whiskey are created, and Ellen our fantastic bartender. Novel-T also unveiled the new Dorothy Parker t-shirt it will be selling later this spring.

Spread the word about voting, and if you are Twitter, the hashtag is #SubwayMrsParker.