from WashingtonPost.com

Dante, Pushkin, Longfellow, Neruda: D.C.'s Favorite Writers?
By Marc Fisher
Friday, March 16, 2007

We've got politicians popping up on street corners and in traffic circles, and of course generals galore, and we even have especially well-done tributes to Gandhi and Einstein, but a far less noticed category of statuary in Washington is authors.

Kim Roberts, editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly, has come up with an impressive list of the writers who are immortalized in statues around the District, and the roster includes not only Francis Scott Key and the greats depicted on the exterior of the Library of Congress, but also Pushkin at GW, Dante (twice!) in Malcolm X Park and at the Casa Italiana in the old downtown, Longfellow at Connecticut and M (who knew?), and not only Neruda but a number of other prominent Latin American writers at the Organization of American States building near the Mall.

So, her challenge, which I hereby pick up, is for folks to find other writers (and other artists, if you'd like to expand the category) who are captured in public statuary in the city. A more expansive list of honors for poets and authors--including not just statues, but museums, monuments and parks--is here.

But if you know of other statues depicting writers and artists--not necessarily outdoors, but at least accessible to the general public and not including works in museums--come ahead.

© 2007 The Washington Post Company

 

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2007/03/dante_pushkin_longfellow_nerud.html