To mark the fifth anniversary of the tragic downtown Minneapolis 35W Bridge collapse that killed 13 and injured 145, Todd collaborated with Swedish artist Maja Spasova to create Project 35W, a month-long "meditation garden" in the Mississippi River.
Thirty-five giant life rings anchored in the river were paired with thirty-five 35-word poems available by phone from a viewing site just upriver from the collapse, on the historic pedestrian Stone Arch Bridge. The photo at left was taken from that site, and the rings were visible on either side of the bridge, spanning a total of approximately six acres. The 35W Bridge, recently rebuilt, is visible downriver, lit in light blue.
The project was sponsored by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which published the entire 35-poem suite in its entirety on the front page of the Variety section on the collapse anniversary. The suite, "Fragments for the 35W Bridge," is collected in Todd's third poetry collection, Tough Luck (W. W. Norton & Co., 2017).
Here's #16 from "Fragments for the 35W Bridge."
Not
water
but
air’s
where
the
fallen
fall
first.
Not
landing,
but
numbing
to
the
fact
that
landing
is
coming,
is
the
worst
part
of
falling.
Not
losing
a
loved
one
but
calling
and
calling.
I crossed the I-35W bridge just 20 minutes before it fell into the Mississippi River, which is unremarkable, given the bridge's daily traffic load. I vividly remember arriving home, getting one of those "are you okay" calls from my cousin John Hermanson, and dialing up CNN. It took me years to gather the courage to tackle the subject in a poem, and the 35-word fragment was the constraint I needed.
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