Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll find out about the national youth poet laureate’s love letter to the school she attends. We’ll also get details on a nonprofit group’s purchase of the Metro Theater building on the Upper West Side.
Some universities have alma maters. Harvard sings to “Fair Harvard,” and Yale harmonizes about “Bright College Years.”
The City University of New York does not have a school song. But this week it is getting a school poem, “Dear CUNY.” It was written by the national youth poet laureate, Stephanie Pacheco, who attends Borough of Manhattan Community College, one of CUNY’s 25 schools.
Dear CUNY,
I don’t know of any other school that runs its city like you
That paints its town with its face
like you
Everywhere I turn, every building is a student
Every train cart is a classroom.
But at least the only loan I’ve acquired
Is at my school library
The only debt I owe is to them.
At 53 lines “Dear CUNY” is too long to be printed in full here. The snippet above came from a YouTube video of Pacheco reciting a 30-second version, itself an excerpt.
She will read the poem tomorrow at an event at Queensborough Community College marking National Poetry Month. Félix Matos Rodríguez, the CUNY chancellor, who is scheduled to attend, called Pacheco’s poem a “beautiful work of poetry that perfectly illustrates the great impact that CUNY has across New York.”
Pacheco, 21, a writing and literature major, was chosen as the national youth poet laureate last year, the eighth person to hold the title. The first was Amanda Gorman, who read a poem she had written at Joseph Biden’s inauguration in 2021 and joined the small group of poets invited to celebrate presidential transitions, among them Robert Frost and Maya Angelou.
Pacheco was named the New York City youth poet laureate in 2023 and was also designated the first youth poet laureate for New York State. She won the three titles in contests organized through Urban Word, a literary arts organization for young people, with support from institutions including the Academy of American Poets and the Library of Congress.
Pacheco said she started writing poetry when she was “in middle schoolish.”
Were the poems she wrote then any good? “I’ve grown a lot,” she said. “I think for an eighth grader, they were good. They had some rhythm to them.” But she also said that at the time she didn’t realize she was writing poetry. “I didn’t understand the full weight of poetry and what it could do for my story” until high school, she said. She attended Mott Hall Science and Technology Academy in the South Bronx.
She began performing her poems when she was 15, signing up for open mic dates and poetry slams. And then, in 2022, “fresh out of the pandemic,” she entered Borough of Manhattan Community College. “For someone who wanted to continue writing and performing,” she said, “it just made sense to stay local. And I wanted to be close to home. There’s something about the pandemic that made you not want to go very far from where you were.”
She said that when CUNY approached her about writing a poem for the school, “they were like: Well, Ms. Poet, we’d love to hear what your experience has been. Tell about CUNY through your poetic eyes.” She said she asked for a week or two to work something up.
“The first couple of days, I was very stuck,” she said. “It took sitting down and asking what it took to be a CUNY student.” Then, she said, “it was like the pen was just moving on its own.”
“I wanted it known that this young person was a public college student,” she said.
“I know the value of attending CUNY. I’m proof of the value of public education, but it felt like sometimes that narrative” was overlooked, she added. “I want it to be known that we CUNY students, that we public school students, that we too are excellent, that we are extraordinary.” And, she added, “especially worthy of poetry.”
Weather
Expect a rainy morning with a temperature hovering in the mid- to high 40s. In the evening, a slight chance of rain returns, with clouds and a dip in the temperature to about 37.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Sunday (Passover).
The latest New York news
Upper West Side theater is sold
A nonprofit group completed its purchase of the landmark Metro Theater on Manhattan’s Upper West Side last week after receiving $4 million in grants from New York State — $3.5 million from Gov. Kathy Hochul and $500,000 from the State Senate.
The nonprofit, the Upper West Side Cinema Center, plans to turn the building into a five-screen complex with a cafe. The group says it needs another $15 million to $25 million to build the new interior, replace the marquee and scrub graffiti off the Art Deco theater.
The Metro closed in 2005. Over the years there was talk of repurposing the building, but the options were limited. The previous owner, Albert Bialek, died in 2023.
Then, last summer, the Upper West Side Cinema Center announced its bid, with support from Martin Scorsese, Ethan Hawke and John Turturro, among others.
In December Micah Lasher — who was elected to the Assembly the month before — heard that the Upper West Side Cinema Center was going to miss a Jan. 10 deadline to buy the building from Bialek’s estate. He contacted Hochul. On Dec. 26, the governor, who was Lasher’s boss when he was director of policy in the governor’s office, called him.
“I have some Christmas news for you,” Lasher remembers hearing her say. “We’re going to save a movie theater.”
Ira Deutchman, an independent film producer who leads the nonprofit with Adeline Monzier, said the government support meant it could get an extension for raising the $6.9 million purchase price. Donations from foundations and individuals filled in the rest, including a major grant from Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg’s Hearthland Foundation.
METROPOLITAN diary
Subway luck
Dear Diary:
I was on the subway platform at Eighth Street and Broadway heading uptown. I was sitting on a bench near the front of the train.
The train rolled in, and I got on. As the doors closed, I realized I had left my laptop on the bench. I pounded on the door to no avail. I watched the computer sitting there in its little white-and-blue polka dot case as the train began to leave the station.
I managed to call my husband, Peter. Maybe he could get to the platform before someone took the laptop. When I couldn’t reach him, I called a friend who was at my apartment and asked her to tell my husband to try to get to the platform. It was only two blocks from home.
I got off at 14th Street, ran to the downtown side of the station and waited five minutes before an R arrived.
When I got back to Eighth Street, I raced across Broadway, ran onto the uptown platform and looked for the laptop case. It was gone. Everything, every thought in my head, every draft of my latest play, was gone with it.
I called my husband. This time he answered.
“I’ve got it,” he said.
“Where are you?”
“On the platform.”
I looked down the platform, and there he was, carrying the case. Some kind person had picked it up and turned it into the station agent.
Whoever you are, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
— Delia Ephron
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.