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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

Poetry Wednesday Message


I’ve spent the past few days in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the American Association of Community Colleges. This time in the city of City Lights made me recall that April is National Poetry Month, so it’s time for the Poetry Wednesday Message. 

My selection this year is inspired by my multiple walks each day back and forth to the Moscone Convention Center. On each trip, I picked up snippets of conversations from an ever-changing, vibrant cast of characters, which made for an intriguing soundscape that reminded me of a poem by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (whom I just learned teaches at SUNY Fredonia; maybe we could get her to read at MCC?). This found poem, which turns snippets of student emails into an entertaining, provocative and touching whole, may echo voices familiar to many faculty.

Dear Amy Nehzooukammyatootill,
by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
(a found poem, composed entirely of e-mails from various high school students)

If I were to ask you a question about your book
and sum it up into one word it would be, Why?
I think I like Walt Whitman better than you. I just don't
get literature, but for a fast hour and a half read, your book

takes the cake. I like how you organized the lines
in that one poem to represent a growing twisting bonsai tree.
Are you going to get a rude reaction when you meet
that one guy in that one poem? I guess you never know.

You are very young to be a poet. I also like how your poems take
up an entire page (it makes our reading assignment go faster).
In class we spend so much time dissecting your poems
and then deeply analyzing them. I think I like Walt Whitman

better than you, but don’t take offense—you are very good too!
You are young, You are young and pure and really just want
to have a good time. Thank you we have taken a debate
and you are a far better poet than Walt Whitman. And I loved

how your poems were easy to read and understand. Hello
my name is Alicia. We read you book and I just loved it.
We also read Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. There
was no competition there. I liked your book a whole lot better.

It was an easy read. But poetry is not my favorite type
of literature. Sometimes I am offered drinks and guys
try to talk to me but I too just brush it off and keep dancing.
Every once and a while the creepy mean guys try to offer you

things and then they say something. What would you do?
Lastly, I was wondering if you ever wrote a poem that really
didn’t have a deeper meaning but everyone still tried
to give it one anyways? Walt Whitman is better than you.

What poem is on your mind this month?  Please share it on the
blog.

Anne M. Kress
President's Office
04/24/2013