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• Thanks to Mint Juleps, Another Fabulous Piece of American Correspondence

• The Intimidating Correlation Between Clean Rooms and Literate Children

• The Latest Experiment: Read Your Way Out of Jail

“Dedication” is the occasional poem Robert Frost famously failed to recite when he approached the podium in order to honor John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961:

Summoning artists to participate
In the august occasions of the state
Seems something artists ought to celebrate.
Today is for my cause a day of days.
And his be poetry’s old-fashioned praise
Who was the first to think of such a thing.
This verse that in acknowledgement I bring
Goes back to the beginning of the end
Of what had been for centuries the trend;
A turning point in modern history.
Colonial had been the thing to be
As long as the great issue was to see
What country’d be the one to dominate
By character, by tongue, by native trait,
The new world Christopher Columbus found.
The French, the Spanish, and the Dutch were downed
And counted out. Heroic deeds were done.
Elizabeth the First and England won.
Now came on a new order of the ages
That in the Latin of our founding sages
(Is it not written on the dollar bill
We carry in our purse and pocket still?)
God nodded his approval of as good.
So much those heroes knew and understood,
I mean the great four, Washington,
John Adams, Jefferson, and Madison
So much they saw as consecrated seers
They must have seen ahead what not appears,
They would bring empires down about our ears
And by the example of our Declaration
Make everybody want to be a nation.
And this is no aristocratic joke
At the expense of negligible folk.
We see how seriously the races swarm
In their attempts at sovereignty and form.
They are our wards we think to some extent
For the time being and with their consent,
To teach them how Democracy is meant.
“New order of the ages” did they say?
If it looks none too orderly today,
‘Tis a confusion it was ours to start
So in it have to take courageous part.
No one of honest feeling would approve
A ruler who pretended not to love
A turbulence he had the better of.
Everyone knows the glory of the twain
Who gave America the aeroplane
To ride the whirlwind and the hurricane.
Some poor fool has been saying in his heart
Glory is out of date in life and art.
Our venture in revolution and outlawry
Has justified itself in freedom’s story
Right down to now in glory upon glory.
Come fresh from an election like the last,
The greatest vote a people ever cast,
So close yet sure to be abided by,
It is no miracle our mood is high.
Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs
Better than all the stalemate an’s and ifs.
There was the book of profile tales declaring
For the emboldened politicians daring
To break with followers when in the wrong,
A healthy independence of the throng,
A democratic form of right divine
To rule first answerable to high design.
There is a call to life a little sterner,
And braver for the earner, learner, yearner.
Less criticism of the field and court
And more preoccupation with the sport.
It makes the prophet in us all presage
The glory of a next Augustan age
Of a power leading from its strength and pride,
Of young ambition eager to be tried,
Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
Of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.

Instead, Frost delivered from memory “The Gift Outright” on that snow-blinding day:

The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia.
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak.
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

Maya Angelou offered “On the Pulse of the Morning” for the 1993 inauguration of William Jefferson Clinton:

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spilling words

Armed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out to us today, you may stand upon me,
But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song. It says,
Come, rest here by my side.

Each of you, a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,
Clad in peace, and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the rock were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.
The River sang and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African, the Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.

They hear the first and last of every Tree
Speak to humankind today. Come to me, here beside the River.
Plant yourself beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name, you,
Pawnee, Apache, Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of
Other seekers — desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede, the German, the Eskimo, the Scot,
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought,
Sold, stolen, arriving on the nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am that Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.
I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours — your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out and upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here, on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes, and into
Your brother’s face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope –
Good morning.

Miller Williams’s “Of History and Hope” marked William Jefferson Clinton’s second inauguration in 1997:

We have memorized America,
how it was born and who we have been and where.
In ceremonies and silence we say the words,
telling the stories, singing the old songs.
We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.
The great and all the anonymous dead are there.
We know the sound of all the sounds we brought.
The rich taste of it is on our tongues.
But where are we going to be, and why, and who?
The disenfranchised dead want to know.
We mean to be the people we meant to be,
to keep on going where we meant to go.
But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how
except in the minds of those who will call it Now?
The children. The children. And how does our garden grow?
With waving hands — oh, rarely in a row –
and flowering faces. And brambles, that we can no longer allow.
Who were many people coming together
cannot become one people falling apart.
Who dreamed for every child an even chance
cannot let luck alone turn doorknobs or not.
Whose law was never so much of the hand as the head
cannot let chaos make its way to the heart.
Who have seen learning struggle from teacher to child
cannot let ignorance spread itself like rot.
We know what we have done and what we have said,
and how we have grown, degree by slow degree,
believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become –
just and compassionate, equal, able, and free.
All this in the hands of children, eyes already set
on a land we never can visit — it isn’t there yet –
but looking through their eyes, we can see
what our long gift to them may come to be.
If we can truly remember, they will not forget.

Today, Elizabeth Alexander recited her own poetic offering, “Praise Song for the Day,” at the 2009 inauguration of Barack H. Obama. To the best of my knowledge, I’ve accurately represented it below:

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer consider the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, Words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; Words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by “first do no harm,” or “take no more than you need.”

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking forward in that light.

How many times have you been annoyed by the marginalia left by some idiot–huge and redoubled exclamation points, uncomplimentary expressions (”absurd,” “oh, come now,” “for God’s sake!!!!”), and long, scrawled explanations of what seems perfectly clear in the printed text? The critical points may be well taken, but the margin is no place to utter them. Pencilings of this sort–including compulsive underlining, a sophomoric affliction if there ever was one–are bad enough; even worse is marking with ink.

Nevertheless, I desecrate.* I ravage. How else will I successfully plunder when the time comes to borrow those words from the page and richly recall the plans I had for them? I will also confess to girlish daydreams of someday stumbling upon the scribbled marginalia of a beloved author, thinker, or critic in a book carelessly discarded at one of the millions of thrift stores that plead for exploration. How ridiculous my delight would be to discover his or her delight or displeasure in the passage at hand.

For me, marginalia also claims fanciful significance, a most embarrassing admission. Plagued by an indulgent imagination, my conscious mind organizes thoughts and discoveries in both “files” and “footnotes.” “Files,” inexplicably named so in elementary school, consist of discoveries I don’t yet know what to make of, things my gut tells me I should find significant and relevant even as I don’t. “Footnotes” represent nomadic facts/truths which prove equally germane to a dozen topics. “Files” and “footnotes” are responsible for the precious notional marginalia inspiring me to defend the actual joy.

In defending marginalia, I am finding it the perfect stuff for the link-happy redemption I seek after the cruel unraveling of my most recent list attempt. So without further consternation, I will form a list of marginalia “filed” and “footnoted” over the past four days:

• Do you judge a book by its cover? Find one more reason to do so at Penguin’s blog post on the Book Designs of the Year. But consider yourself warned, Pynchon fans argue that you ought do otherwise.
• Google Books continues to dream big about “little-seen” books, even while research warns that online reading may not be a suitable replacement for the printed word. Be that as it may, John Yemma, editor of The Christian Science Monitor, suggests that the printed word has truly become a luxury once more.
• But what about the auditory? Thanks to my mother’s insistence on reading us literature aloud from her armchair, I hold a special place in my heart for audio books. Audio renditions of literature can both surprise, as Maud Newton found when sifting through the British Library Archives, and delight, as I rediscovered upon hearing John Lithgow’s reading of “Taste,” a short story by children’s author Roald Dahl.
• Sunday P. humored me by suggesting we watch one of my favorite movies (for the 9th time), The Winslow Boy (1999), a beautiful David Mamet film adaptation of the late Sir Terence Rattigan’s stage-play. The movie’s message inspired me to hunt up David Mamet’s political, coming-out essay: “Why I am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead’ Liberal,” published in March at the Village Voice, and wonder at his bold, refreshing political transformation.
• In the New York Times, Stanley Fish publishes a bizarre and dubiously relevant list of the “10 Best American Movies,” only two of which follow the golden 1950s.
• Many are quibbling over the artistic and social function of video games. Last year Steven Poole argued against a simple classification of gaming as “play.” This year John Lanchester turns the London Review of Books into a launching point for the discussion of video games’ artistic merits. Jane McGonigal, spokeswoman for the Institute For The Future, encourages museums to adopt an opportunistic view of the gaming industry as museums seek to reaffirm their relevance and innovative spirit in the 21st century.
• Weisberg finishes his list of Bushisms with a humorous “Top 25,” highlighting the importance of syntax and precision.

*Out of respect for Altick, I marked the above passage from The Art of Literary Research with a hurriedly-fashioned, sticky note bookmark.

As it turns out, looking forward is a British thing to do. (Who knew?) If you want to know what English fiction will be published in 2009, I hope (for your sake) that you live on the isle, because Americans are fixed on the backward glance. Nowhere is this clearer than in the papers, where we discover the obligatory year-end article in the Arts & Entertainment section. Here you find that ironic juxtaposition crystallized: the British write of what is to come while the Americans write of what is past. In early-to-mid December, American Arts and Entertainment headlines read “Books in Brief” (The Atlantic Monthly), “10 Best Books of 2008” (The New York Times), “Fiction in Translation: How to Find the Year’s Best” (LA Times), or “Another Year of Reading” (Wall Street Journal). In late December and early January, British headlines read “Fiction to look out for in 2009” (Financial Times), “Highlights of 2009: Books” (The Independent), and even “Treats in Store for 2009” (The Guardian).

Now I must end that catalogue with the acknowledgement that I have seen (after a week of scoring search engines, blogs, and newspaper headlines) a few American articles daring to look forward. But their focus/content (”Will Big Names Lure Readers?” [WSJ] or “Diet Books for the New Year” [again, WSJ]) disappoints me, a revelation that briefly tempts me to navel-graze at my own shallow application of post-structural ideals.

Why so sad, America? I can’t help but postulate that, once again, “it’s the economy, stupid.” Just in time for holiday shopping, American publishers pumped out lists of “Best of 2008,” catalogues desperately appealing for consumption in a month of consumer famine. Then December brought rumors of trouble; publishing outlooks dipped lower and lower and purse strings drew tighter and tighter. My guess is that the present woes simply stole the spotlight.

But it’s not all bad news. One of my favorite blogs, The Millions, posted stellar back-to-back articles that surely made Janus proud:”Year in Reading…” and “Most Anticipated.” And there’s so much to anticipate (like Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice).

Which 2009 work(s) are you keeping an eye on?

Few celebrate the Christmas holidays as extensively as the Boricuas, whose traditions closely intertwine with those of the Catholic Church. Boricua Christmas consists of a month of consecutive holiday feasts. So, regardless of the every-growing influence of the United States on both Puerto Rico’s emigrants and the island, Boricua Christmas has been slow to homogenize:

• December 16-24th: Puerto Ricans celebrate Misas de Aguinaldo, a series of early morning Catholic masses which prove almost exclusively song services. These song services include religious and traditional aguinaldos (Puerto Rican Carols) which are labeled villancicos to separate them from their more rowdy counterparts. Unlike the majority of Puerto Rican celebrations, this tradition originated in Mexico and then spread to the Carribean.
• December 24th: At midnight, Misa de Gallo (the last Misa de Aguinaldo) provides a weighty climax complete with carolers, crèche, and candles. Of course, Nochebuena is Christmas Eve. Boricuas gather for celebrations, encouraging the excessive consumption of lechón asado (pit-roasted pig) and pasteles, that stretch late into the night.
• December 25th: Navidad proves more similar to the typical American celebration as it came from the States. Houses are decorated with lights. Santa spreads his good cheer. Nativity scenes crowd a corner of the home or yard (although nacimientos, scenes with the Three Wise Men/Los Reyes, hold more prominence than they are typically given in America). Caroling, or parrandas, plays an important role too. Puerto Rican parranderos creep out late in the night and assault unsuspecting households by waking them with aguinaldos (often criollo in flavor) at their doorstep. Each home that suffers a surprise joins the party of parranderos and the group continues throughout the neighborhood, growing louder and larger the longer they sing. This year even our Philadelphia newscast included video footage of Ricans’ rowdy carolling. The holiday meals include a feast of arroz con gandules, plátanos, and more pasteles. (Where it is possible, spit-roasted pig often fills the air with fragrance all day too.) Custard, nougat, and sweet rice fill the dessert menu.
• December 28th: Dia de los Inocentes also includes a feast. Traditionally, it’s quite carnivalesque, full of tricks and treats that remind one of April Fools’ Day in the States. (Horribly ironic, considering the religious significance of Herod’s Bethlehem massacre.) Few Boricuas celebrate it as such anymore because the tradition was much more strongly tied to the canarios, their ancestors from the Canary Islands. At most, it is a day of foolery.
• December 31st: Año Viejo includes fireworks and late night parties which climax at midnight when the chimes signal a new year. In honor of the literary, many Puerto Ricans participate in a reading of (the sentimental and humorously sexist) “El Brindis del Bohemio,” an occasional poem marking the holiday spirit. In Philadelphia (as on the island, I hear), Boricuas rush into their driveways or onto the streets in order to honk their horns or sound firecrackers in honor of the new year.
• January 5th: Víspera de Reyes, the eve of El Día de Reyes, honors the three Wise Men, as sainted and named by the Catholic Church. Traditionally, this day parallels the spirit of an American Christmas Eve. Children bounce with anticipation of the Kings’ midnight visit. Each child places a shoebox, filled with grass, cabbage, or other greenery for the traveling horses/camels to munch on, beneath their bed. On top of the bed of grass, the children place a gift wish list for the Magi. All children are admonished to be well-behaved and quick to sleep so that they do not scare away the Kings’ horses.
• January 6th: On Día de Reyes, Puerto Ricans remember the Wise Men and their adoration of Christ. Día de Reyes, it follows, parallels the mainland celebration of Christmas. Children awake at ungodly hours to discover a wealth of gifts beneath their bed, thanks to the generous Baltazar, Melchor, and Gaspar (yes, our Three Wise Men or Los Reyes Magos). Relatives bring boxes from beneath their own beds, filled with gifts which happen to be intended for the children whom the relatives are visiting. At some point, the family passes rosca de reyes, a beautiful ring of bagel-like breakfast bread decorated with candied fruit. The next three days include feasts in celebration of each Wise Man, backed by the legend and sainthood bestowed by the Catholic Church:
• January 6th: Saint Gaspar (Emperor of the “Orient”) Day
• January 7th: Saint Melchor (Sultan of Arabia) Day
• January 8th: Saint Baltazar (Nubian and Ethiopian Ruler) Day
• January 15th: Las Octavitas, a celebration in honor of the faith of the Wise Men, serves as a prelude to la Cuaresma (Lent) for the religiously observant. During this time Puerto Ricans also visit the homes of those who came to their own during the holidays. Today January 15th signals that it is time to take down the decorations and pack them away for another year. (As you can imagine, the secularization of these holidays typically shortens the celebrations to a two-week period, beginning Christmas Eve and ending on Kings’ Day.)

As a Protestant, third-generation puertorriqueña, I find certain Rican traditions startlingly logical (e.g., gift-giving on Día de Reyes). During the holidays, some Protestant celebrations share many of the same elements as these Rican traditions: song services, crèches, nativity plays, worship gatherings. Of course, a deeper look reveals a deliberate, theological divorce from Catholic sainthood, masses, rites, etc. That being said, many Protestants have separated themselves from all but stark observations of any religious holiday in reaction to the grandiose, liturgical traditions of the Catholic Church (which most Protestants believe to be largely heretical in its teachings and observances). In the home, modern Protestant celebrations involve little more than a nativity, the reading of Luke 2:1-20, and a tree. P. and I wonder over the ironic juxtaposition of Protestant hesitation in the development of distinctive, religious celebrations and the loud rally cries to “keep Christ in Christmas” or “make” Jesus “the reason for the season.”

Last Sunday P. and I taught the children in our church during the service. The Bible passage was the-one-and-the-same Adoration of the Christ. We incorporated a living crèche into the lesson, epilogued by an explanation of the Bethlehem massacre and discussion of divine sovereignty. It’s so easy to stop with what is familiar (Mary, Joseph, and the manger) and forget the wealth and breadth of detail the story of Christ’s nativity relates. This experience led me to toy with the idea of gingerly Protestantizing Día de Reyes by adopting the aspects which religiously affirm our own creed and celebration of the gospel. Yes, I’ve thoroughly analyzed the irony my bald, communal reconstruction of Día de Reyes would prove, but it’s to no avail. I just don’t mind if I do.