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In Poetry: A Place We Call Home

For the 1924 dedication of Alumnae House, Carolyn Wilson Link, class of 1917, wrote the poem “The Chronicler Speaks,” which was recited by Sydney Thompson, class of 1912, during the original ceremony. It now adorns a wall in the Alumnae House dining room. In honor of the 100th Anniversary of the House, Vassar commissioned Kimberly Nguyễn ’19 to write a poem, which she recited during the Anniversary celebration in April.

After the event, Nguyễn admitted on Instagram, “When I was asked to write the poem to mark the 100-year rededication of Vassar’s Alumnae House, I thought there must be a mistake. Surely there are more accomplished and prolific poets out there who should greet the next 100 years of alumni who walk through these doors.”

But the assignment was in good hands. Nguyễn is an award-winning Vietnamese American poet and the author of ghosts in the stalks and Here I Am Burn Me. Among other honors, she earned the Beatrice Daw Brown Prize and was a 2021 Emerging Voices Fellow at PEN America and a 2022–2023 Poetry Coalition Fellow.

“When I say Vassar was my home, I mean it in the most literal sense,” she noted. “For four years, it was registered as my permanent, legal address. I was registered to vote in Dutchess County. It terrified me to leave the same way it terrifies any young adult to leave a place they consider safe towards someplace unknown and chaotic. And what I mean to say is who better to welcome alumni home than me, then? Who better to greet the students after me who also have yet to know a home other than here? To all alumni—past, present, and future—my poem and my spirit living within it cannot wait to welcome you home.” —Elizabeth Randolph

Alma Mater

by Kimberly Nguyễn ’19

alma mater, lighthouse in the dark sea
of my memory, where my youth still
blazes, that everlasting fire of my past
in the distance, reminder of that hunger –
once so urgent – those days of passion,
now a sun setting over a still lake.

a ship sailed far from the shore, I look
to her guiding light, the promise of home
always on the dark horizon, to know I am
never too far from the fire of my youth.
to know the distance is the measure
of how far I have come and how far
I have yet to go. to know despite it all
I will always have a place to land.

Beowulf Sheehan

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