Invisible in plain view, literature to a T
I was across from Back Bay Station when I saw a granite column with writing carved into it. It was a short story -- a whole story, right there on the column. ``Counterpoint," by Jane Barnes , tells of Kate, practicing Bach while she quarrels with Tom about a late bill payment, who thinks, ``So this is what it was like . . . to take all that external irritation and put it into the music."
What?
I had passed this spot many times, but never seen this, nor a nearby column where a poem by Ruth Whitman was carved. A third column explained a 1987 project, ``Boston Contemporary Writers," that had placed poetry and prose reflecting ``the experience of living or working in an urban environment" along the Southwest Corridor. Pairs of works -- one poetry, one prose -- were installed at nine T stops along the Orange Line as a sort of meandering urban Stonehenge.
Did I have a choice? I got on the Orange Line. It was easy to spot the column set in the middle of Ruggles Station. Even the coffee cup brazenly perched on top could not detract from Samuel Allen's poem, ``Harriet Tubman aka Moses ," with its powerful ending:
``for a moment in the long journey came the first faint glimpses
of the stars, the everlasting stars, shining clear over the free cold land." Finding the other piece, listed as ``Four Letters Home" by Will Holton, proved harder. I've been a fan of art on the T, both official, like the bronze gloves by Mags Harries ``dropped" at Porter Square, and unofficial, like the clarinetist at Copley. But I had completely missed this series -- and apparently I wasn't the only one. When I asked a T employee where the other column was, he had no idea what I was talking about. I pointed out Allen's poem. ``I've never seen that," he said. ``I'll have to read it."
Another thing I had missed, having arrived in Boston in 1990, was the difficult history that this project grew out of. Pamela Worden, then president and CEO of a nonprofit group, Urban Arts Inc., had proposed it as an ``opportunity for healing" from the deep wounds suffered in the mid-1960s when a massive highway project was planned that would have sliced through a number of neighborhoods, and effectively isolate Roxbury and Jamaica Plain from the rest of the city. The plan was dropped, but only after a decade of public outrage. Instead, in the swath cleared for the proposed Southwest Corridor highway, a new Orange Line was built to replace the old elevated rail line.
``There was a lot of hurt in the neighborhoods," she explains, ``and this was an opportunity to leave a legacy where the scars had been. We wanted to use words because we are surrounded by words. We have advertising screaming at us. We felt there ought to be words in the public environment that speak to us more deeply."
The pieces chosen in a blind competition include work by unpublished writers and those with major reputations. Eileen Meny , who was the project director, says, ``We wanted the writing to reflect the neighborhoods. We hoped that when people came out of the subway they would find a sense of place."
Outside Ruggles Station, I recognized four familiar-looking columns. Holton's piece is a series of imagined letters home from people who had settled in Roxbury: Winslow writes in 1834 to his parents in Maine about his small farm; in 1886, Patrick tells his Irish family the neighborhood is filling with Italians and Russian Jews ``and their strange ways"; Morris, from Poland, is selling hardware in 1926; and Charlie writes his family in Georgia in 1960 that he works hard as a custodian, though ``people don't really appreciate what I do."
As I reenter the station, I see the T worker I talked to earlier reading the Samuel Allen poem, and pointing it out to a passerby.
At Jackson Square I find Christine Palamidessi Moore 's ``Grandmothers," about her Italian ``Nonna" and Slovak ``Baba," and a Christopher Gilbert poem, ``Any Good Throat." At Stony Brook, Rosario Morales and Martin Espada write about newcomers who brought their languages and customs along with their hopes and dreams; and at Green Street, Mary Bonina and Daria MonDesire evoke a world that, though geographically close, is miles from Copley Square.
But time, weather, and initial concept are sometimes unkind, and reading words on polished stone can be a challenge. That's what I find at Roxbury Crossing, where Jeanette DeLello Winthrop 's poem, ``Roxbury Crossing," is all but illegible. So too is ``Hometown" by Luix Virgil Overbea , a long narrative that covers all four sides of its column. Its subject and its placement demand attention, but it is, unfortunately, one of the less successful pieces.
At Forest Hills, the columns (which a T staffer insisted weren't there) are up at the bus stop.
I read a poem by Thomas Hurley called ``The Subway Collector ," then went inside the station to join the people trying to figure out the new CharlieCard vending machines.
Contact citytype@globe.com. Past columns are at www.ellensteinbaum.com. 
