I wasn’t going to say anything about the poetry. I didn’t say anything last year, when a LinkNYC kiosk on Northern Boulevard cycled nothing but 3rd grade poetry for as long as I could stand to watch. But it is Poetry Month again, meaning the LinkNYC network looks more like a sprawling electronic school literary magazine than Smart City devices conveying relevant, useful information. Unfortunately in this case LinkNYC committed what poets of any age would consider a cardinal sin: A spelling error.

How does one even pronounce “2rd”, anyway? Turd? Turd grade poetry. That’s what the we need.

I enjoy typos, and do not single out “2rd Grade” for reasons any different from why I maintain a website dedicated to Typos, Engrish, and Funny Signs. It’s just funny, and demonstrates that whatever the size of a sign or the importance of a news headline its creators are as human as the rest of us.

Another typo I remember seeing on LinkNYC was Jello-O. But I also took issue with one of the “NYC Facts” that cycled through the screens some time last year. I don’t recall the specific opera but the screen said that on this day such-and-so opera was “sung” at the Metropolitan Opera for the first time. Sorry, Charlie, an opera is not sung, it is performed. Of course the singers sing, but the tubists and tympanists do not, thank heaven for that.

I don’t know who chooses the poetry for these kiosks, and to be clear I am not commenting on its quality. I write a lot of poetry myself. Much of it is pretty awful. But I do not expect anyone to care about it any more than I should be expected to have a reaction to anyone else’s. In asking who chooses this stuff I assume the obvious, that all content is given to CityBridge free of charge with the assumption that exposure is payment enough. That might work for a 2rd grader but I wouldn’t want to see any respectable poet fall for it.

Ah, but what does it matter if the Poetry Month content clogs the screens so much that the “useful” Smart City stuff gets buried? The appearance of useful information is, for the most part, just that: An appearance. The kiosks’ “News You Can’t Use” headlines display AP heds that often cause bafflement rather than enrichment. The bus arrival screens serve to let you know a bus is approaching a bus stop ½ a mile away from you, and that you cannot possibly get there in time, all this on the extremely remote chance that it happened to be a bus you needed, or that you could even process the content of the screen’s content before it disappeared.

Now that I think of it, if it lessens the blight of informational irritants, bring on the Turd Grade Poetry instead.