In April, The Humanities Library honored and celebrated National Poetry Month by inviting our patrons to use our magnet words in our Reading Room, under the West mezzanine, to compose poems. The above composition was, believe it our not, the most reproducible entry we received. That’s right…"BENZENE." One of our patrons created this cryptic magnet "poem," where each letter is made of a cluster of other words. Is there a relationship between the words that make up each letter, and the letter they make up, and/or the word "BENZENE?" You tell us. It’s admittedly a bit hard to read in the photo, so here it is spelled out:
"B" – There, Laughter, Distain, Math, Very, Atheist
So, is it a poem? It is, no doubt, mysterious, curious, and playful. And those qualities are at least some of the building blocks, so to speak, of all poetry. Agree? Disagree? Come by our library and use the magnets to compose an answer, or another poem.