Larry on the Lawn

Larry on the Lawn: Lyrical Signs for Political Times

Created by Yo ❤ 305 and O, Miami

Yo Amo 305 teamed up with O, Miami to transform eight excerpts from the American poet Larry Levis (1946 - 1996) into “campaign-style” lawn signs. 500+ hundred signs were distributed around Miami via guerrilla placement and voluntary adoption. Each excerpt was chosen by O, Miami. Yo Amo 305 designed the signs, manufactured them, and spearheaded the distribution. The purpose of the project was to take a forum for familiarizing voters with the name of a politician—lawn signs—and use it to familiarize Miamians with the work of a “forgotten” American master of poetry, the late Larry Levis. To read more of Levis’s work, search his name at poets.org or poetryfoundation.org and purchase his books from Graywolf Press.

Levis, born in Fresno to a family of grape farmers, died of a heart-attack in 1996 (age 49) as a relatively unknown American master. This series of lawn signs, generously hosted by business and home-owners in Miami-Dade County, introduces Levis’s beauty and genius to citizens who, expecting the familiar, encounter strange and somewhat detached messages with no simple agenda or demand. During this election season, as the American political system attempts to put us all into very specific boxes, “Larry on the Lawn” reminds us that we are all more complex than a series of penciled-in bubbles.