Letters: Martín Espada’s Roommate Checks In

I read with more than usual interest Eric Goldscheider’s feature article on Martin Espada [“The People’s Poet,” Spring 2010]. I was one of Martin’s roommates at Sellery Hall. We had a unique living experience because our room housed not two students but three, and this was entirely due to Martin’s benevolence and elevated sense of humanity.

Our third roommate [whom I will call John], had been rooming down the hall with a student who was dealing cannabis out of the room at all hours. John, a serious engineering student, was having difficulty coping with the late-night, heavy flow of people in and out of the room. Martin’s inspired solution was to build a bunk bed and invite John into our room. So it is no surprise that Martin should develop into a poet of the downtrodden, as he has always exhibited just such character.

It is also no accident that during that fateful semester living in our cramped, shrunken Sellery Hall enclave, I had never laughed so hard in my life. This remains true to this day.

Rob Andropolis ’84 Montgomery, Illinois

Published in the Summer 2010 issue