Jersey City’s Poet Laureate and ‘Teddy Roosevelt’ to Appear at Lincoln Association Dinner

Article by : JC TIMES

As exemplified by his public speeches and private letters, Rodas said, Abraham Lincoln “was a poet – he had a flair for that art form” – “the contents of which was so much more about quality than quantity.”

And, in the process of “cutting out the fluff,” she added, this writing “creates compressed diamonds. That was his gift.”

Rodas will read excerpts from her newly revised version of “Mystic Lincoln” February 12 at the Jersey City Lincoln Association’s annual dinner, starting at 6 p.m., at the Liberty House Restaurant in Liberty State Park.

Rodas, who came to the U.S.with her family from her native Guatemala at age 7, spent her formative years in Bayonne where she received “a stellar education” and was always encouraged to explore her origins as a budding writer.

A New Jersey City University alum with a degree in fine arts and K-12 teaching certificate, Rodas credits NJCU professor Edvige Giunta with inspiring her to “dig deep” in composing her memoir.

“It’s the story,” she said, “ of my dad – an accountant in Guatemala – who, after the family’s emigration to the U.S. – wore a checkered shirt and white pants doing hard work in a restaurant ...

Her memoir is included in a collection of U.S. immigrant working class literature published by Oxford University Press which is touted today as recommended reading to young visitors touring Ellis Island.

Teachers accompanying their students on such visits can access an online application containing those stories as part of in-class history lessons.

Since 2008, Rodas has switched from daily teaching to periodically conducting writing workshops at local and regional schools and has partnered with her sister as consultants to Jersey City and developers in placing low-income residents in affordable housing.

Rodas also represents Ward A on the Jersey City Arts & Culture Trust Fund Commission. To that end, she initiated in-person sessions to get public feedback on how to spend grant money for that endeavor and has devised a blueprint on how all wards can go about applying for those grants.

She also volunteers for the Museum of History of Jersey City.

For all her achievements. Rodas was enshrined last year in the Bayonne High School Hall of Fame.

Rodas says she finds many life lessons common to the present and Lincoln’s.

“We’re also living in a time where our nation is divided,” she says, and Lincoln – known as the “Great Emancipator” – “wanted to give all people the dignity and respect they deserve.”

Says Rodas, “Not many people are aware that Lincoln wrote poetry during his teenage years, primarily satirical verses and brief stanzas on the flyleaves of books. While traveling the 8th Judicial Circuit in Central Illinois, lawyers would gather around a fireplace in the evenings to listen to his storytelling and poetry recitations.”

As a man of “great tenderness,” Lincoln “had the heart of a poet, a quiet strength, leading the nation from a sense of serving the greater good,” she adds.

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