Muni Art 2022 Poem - Populist Manifesto

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This page is part of Muni Art 2022.

Populist Manifesto

Poets, come out of your closets,
Open your windows, open your doors,
You have been holed up too long
In your closed worlds.

Come down, come down
from your Russian Hills and Telegraph Hills,
your Beacon Hills and your Chapel Hills,
your Mount Analogues and Montparnasses,
down from your foothills and mountains,
out of your tepees and domes.
The trees are still falling
and we’ll to the woods no more.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “Populist Manifesto.” Reprinted with the permission of the author. All rights reserved. Muni Art 2022, San Francisco Beautiful, sfbeautiful.org

Artist Interpretations

Krithika Sengottaiyan

A two-lane road going uphill and flanked by grass and scattered flowers overlooks a row of 2- to 4-story residential buildings of various ages and in different colors.

Richard Louis Perri

A color-altered image of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. The building is rendered mostly in pink and black. Blue-and-teal banners read "Democracy is not a spectator sport". The building is surrounded by dark blue. The street in front is rendered in white, yellow, pink and gray.

Sebastian Raphael

An outline of a cable car is flanked by plants. In the background is a sky filled with fluffy clouds, floating open books and trolley wires. A street sign tells us this is the zero block of Russian Hill. Signs on the cable car feature a Muni logo and read "Beautiful San Francisco" and "Russian Hill, Telegraph, Beacon & Chapel Hills".

Steffan Sanguinetti

A cable car in brownish-pink and peach crests over a hill overlooking the bay, Alcatraz, and a finger of cloud.

Tan Sirinumas

The view from the crooked part of Lombard Street, overlooking North Beach, Chinatown and the Financial District, with Coit Tower and the Bay Bridge in the background.