The Academy Of American Poets celebrates April as National Poetry Month. A poem by Monica Youn titled “Four Freedoms Park” about Roosevelt Island is featured as part of their Poem-A-Day series.

According to the Poem-A-Day website:

In my sons early infancy, I was staying near Roosevelt Island and spent many
afternoons taking the tram over and circumambulating the little island. The
FDR Memorial in Four Freedoms Park, a luxurious geometry of honed granite, is
the play/picnic ground for local families, many of whom are Asian American and
drawn by the islands sterile high-rise condos and the promise of a car-free,
crime-free New York City neighborhood. The ubiquity of Asian American faces
sharpened the many ironies of FDRs Four Freedoms, a speech he gave in the
same year in which, caving to wartime racism, he signed Executive Order 9066,
authorizing the internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry. The memorial
also abuts the ruins of the Smallpox Hospital, and ties into the islands long
history as a site of segregation and confinement for those deemed criminal,
insane, or poora reminder that, in the U.S., freedom for some has always
come at the expense of incarceration for others. Monica Youn

Ms Youn recites her poem , Four Freedoms Park

Academy of American Poets Monica Youn: “Four Freedoms Park”

Click here to read the text of the poem.