600 Posts!

When I wrote my annual New Year's post, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that was my 599th blog post. When I went back to see when #500 was, I was even more surprised to realize it had taken place on New Year's Day in 2015...AND that #400 had coincided with 2013 New Year's. It seems oddly serendipitous, then, that my 600th post is happening now, and still rather amazing that I've had this blog going for 10 years now. I've decided to leave the design of the blog as-is for now, but it's always fun to look at statistics and see how the site has been reached and what are the most popular posts.

The blog statistics show that I've now had 185,536 page views since August 2008, with visitors mostly coming from U.S. Internet addresses, followed by Russia (!), France, United Kingdom, and Germany, with Italy just barely behind Germany. Readers are mostly coming from Internet Explorer browsers still, although that has dropped down a few percents since 2015 to 36%, while Firefox (30%) and Chrome (22%) use has gone up respectively by 4% and 3% since 500 posts. Not surprisingly, Google searching accounts for about 2/3 of all the statistics in terms of being directed to specific posts. When I look at the most popular blog posts since August 2008, I have to laugh that #1 has remained the most frequently visited/read post (you wouldn't believe how much spam commentary I get on that one!). What was #4 on the 500th mark has bumped up to #2, and remarkably my #s 3, 4, and 5 are all new posts since 2015. Who knew that my Inauguration Day 2017 rant would generate such a high number of reads!? Here's the current ranking:
#1: Male Enhancement [Jul. 5, 2010; 2675 views]
#2: Post-Queer Art History [Oct. 13, 2009; 1699 views]
#3: President Tyrant [Jan. 21, 2017; 1590 views]
#4: Poem #2 [Jan. 30, 2017; 1451 views]
#5: Poem #1 [Nov. 29, 2016; 1350 views]

It is interesting that my recording of two poems, relating them to certain events at the time, come up as being so popular. I suspect it has to do with the fact that someone is searching for the actual poems or poetry by the authors (in this case respectively Emma Lazarus and Florine Stettheimer), but I appreciate their discovery here and makes me wonder if there is a renewed interest in reading poetry? Last year, I read Richard Blanco's memoirs For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet's Journey, which was so fantastic in terms of his life experience as a gay Latino in America, but also his zeal and drive for poetry and writing, and reading his poem at Pres. Obama's inauguration. Perhaps we all need more poetry in our lives...

Thank you to the readers who contact me with encouragement to continue blogging along!

Poem #3

My guilt is "slavery's chains," too long
the clang of iron falls down the years.
This brother's sold, this sister's gone,
is bitter wax, lining my ears.
My guilt made music with the tears.

My crime is "heroes, dead and gone,"
dead Vesey, Turner, Gabriel,
dead Malcolm, Marcus, Martin King.
They fought too hard, they loved too well.
My crime is I'm alive to tell.

My sin is "hanging from a tree,"
I do not scream, it makes me proud.
I take to dying like a man.
I do it to impress the crowd.
My sin lies in not screaming loud.

-- Maya Angelou, "My Guilt," from Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971)

These days, when we seem to be reeling over and over from the racist rhetoric of our Tyrant and his sycophantic supporters, it seems more important than ever to remember someone like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as everyone of any race, color, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, and creed, who has died in the fight for equality in this nation built on democracy, equal opportunity, and freedom.

(Here is a link to my tribute to Maya Angelou when she died in 2014.)

Poem #2

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

-- Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus" (1883)

I took the image you see above in Jersey City this evening, at a rally that AA, AG, and I attended to help support the rights of immigrants, refugees, and Muslims who should be welcomed, not rejected, to America. This poem was written by Lazarus to help raise funds for the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty (image: Elcobbola, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11136558).

Poem #1

Then back to New York
And skytowers had begun to grow
And front stoop houses started to go
And life became quite different
And it was as tho' someone had planted seeds
And people sprouted like common weeds
And seemed unaware of accepted things
And did all sorts of unheard of things
And out of it grew an amusing thing
Which I think is America having its fling
And what I should like is to paint this thing.

-- Florine Stettheimer, from Crystal Flowers: Poems and a Libretto, eds. I. Gammel & S. Zelazo (Toronto: BookThug, 2010)

For quite a while now, I have been wanting to start a series of posts about poems I encounter, and the meanings they have for me. This past week AA and I were in Amsterdam and Copenhagen, and one of the books I read was this collection of poetry by the painter Florine Stettheimer (1871-1944), about whom I have blogged before. Returning to New York from our vacation, and seeing the incredible skyline with the new World Trade Center dominating lower Manhattan, I was reminded that no matter how much I enjoy travel and seeing other cities, it is so rewarding to come back home to my "City." Stettheimer's own words convey this same idea. In the mid-1890s, she and her mother and sisters went to Europe, and they only returned in 1914 when the Great War broke out. Almost 20 years had passed since she had been in New York and in that time "skytowers" grew up, taking over the brownstones, and people of all races and creeds and ethnicities seemed to be accepted for doing their own thing. This was for Stettheimer part of the American spirit: "America having its fling." It is a view of New York City that makes me smile. It is as relevant now as it was a century ago.

First Snowstorm: 2015-2016 Winter

Unwarmed by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag wavering to and fro
Crossed and recrossed the winged snow:
And ere the early bedtime came
The white drift piled the window-frame,
And through the glass the clothes-line posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.
-- John Greenleaf Whittier, Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl (1866), lines 31-40.

Last Sunday was our first snowfall, and today we most definitely have been hit with our first snowstorm of the season. As of yesterday they were saying possibly 8-10 inches. The latest estimate is now 24-28 inches, but it is slowing down now. I went out for a walk a few hours ago and it was blizzard-like; I was walking in snow drifts up to my knees. I actually found it exhilarating and couldn't stop laughing, although after walking around for a few blocks I was super cold and wet, and headed back inside. The picture you see here I took this afternoon from AA's loft window in Jersey City, where we have been hunkered down and he has been dealing with a cold.

The quotation of poetry above, however, has been a personal touch to my day. I recently rediscovered on my bookshelf an 1898 edition of the poetry of Whittier, a book I long have treasured because it belonged to my Nana when she was in elementary school in 1915. Her name is written in her hand on the inside cover. Ages ago, I had read Whittier's poem when I was in school, and it has remained one of my favorite American poems. Having grown up in NY/NJ, snow has always been part of my life, and I find the descriptions of the snowstorm to be so beautifully written. But even more rewarding are Whittier's poetic memories of his family members, each of whom he describes recounting their own past lives, all while a snowstorm brews outside. The literary layering of Whittier in the 1860s writing a poem to his niece that recounts his own memories of his family (and visiting guests), who entertain one another with stories of their own lives, makes this poem a heart-warming paean to history, family, narrativity, and how nature has the power to remind us of our connection to the earth and the seasons. If you haven't read this poem before, I highly recommend it. To learn more about Whittier and the history of the poem, click here.

Talks in Rome, New York, Oxford, and Pittsburgh

I've just returned from an amazing two-week vacation in Italia, as I mentioned would be happening during my birthday post. I may write about some of the details of that trip if I have time over the next few weeks. For now, however, I wanted to blog briefly about a series of talks that already have, and will take place, over the next few months. I am fortunate to have been invited to give talks in three of these locations, and the fourth was only just announced to me as an acceptance of my conference proposal. It's definitely going to be a busy couple of months!

One of the things I did not mention about my trip to Italia was that I was invited to speak at the Keats-Shelley House in Rome on April 23rd. This fascinating institution on the Piazza di Spagna is set up as a memorial with a library and archive of materials associated with the British Romantic poets John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron. I gave an hour-long talk there about the life and works of John Gibson, the sculptor about whom I have spoken and published in the past, entitled "From Mars and Cupid to the Tinted Venus: The Sculptor John Gibson and His Studio in Rome." As far as we know, Gibson never met any of these poets in person, but he did know well the painter Joseph Severn, who traveled to Rome with Keats and was with him when he died (and later buried beside him). Like Gibson he remained in Rome for a number of years as an expatriate artist.

Next week, on May 7th at 6:30pm, I am giving a talk at the Dahesh Museum of Art gallery/shop here in NYC, as part of their monthly Salon Thursdays. My talk is entitled "Jewish Artists in Victorian London: Abraham, Rebecca, and Simeon Solomon" and will encompass aspects of the life and times of the Solomons, as well as highlight important paintings from their careers. The image you see above is by the eldest brother Abraham, Second Class, The Parting, 1854, which will be among the works discussed both as a genre painting and part of the contemporaneous interest in that new mass transit invention, the railroad. The talk is free and open to the public. (You can read more about my posts on the Solomons by clicking here.)

Then, in early June, I am giving an invited talk at a conference to be held at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University. The conference is about object-centered learning and the use of museum collections in education. (I confess that I cannot find anything online about this, but it is a conference open to registrants, and is scheduled for June 5 and 6.) My paper is yet to be titled, but will relate to the work we have been doing at Columbia using art works for curricular integration, and comes as a nice follow-up to the object-centered symposium we hosted in February this year. I've discovered also that an exhibition of British drawings will be on while I'm there, so I look forward to seeing that.

And, finally, in October, I will be part of a panel session on globalism in 19th-century art at the annual Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC), to be held in Pittsburgh (their first conference north of the Mason-Dixon Line). bklynbiblio readers may recall that I gave a talk about Gibson and polychrome sculpture at last year's SECAC in Sarasota. This year, however, my paper will be based on a rather new project: the visual culture of Anglo-Persian relations around the time of the Napoleonic Wars. One of the more distinct images associated with this, then, will be the image you see here. This is a portrait of Mirza Abul Hassan Khan (1776-1845), painted 1809-10 by William Beechey. The mirza was the Persian ambassador from the Qajar Shah of Iran to the court of King George III at the time this was painted. The painting is in the collection of the British Library. Here is the brief abstract I submitted for my paper, which will take place in about 6 months from now.

James Justinian Morier and Mirza Abul Hasan Khan:

Anglo-Persian Diplomacy in British Art, ca. 1810-20

by Roberto C. Ferrari, Columbia University

Columbia University’s art collection includes a heretofore unknown 1818 portrait attributed to George Henry Harlow of the writer and diplomat James Justinian Morier (1782-1849) dressed in Persian clothing. The painting seems to falls in line with contemporaneous Orientalist portraits showing Western sitters wearing Eastern garb. However, an exploration into Morier’s life and times shows that this label disregards the painting’s association with the global politics of its day. Indeed, this painting is an important part of the visual culture of Anglo-Persian diplomacy during the Napoleonic wars. Morier is best known today for his Romantic novel The Adventures of Hajji Baba (1824), but he also wrote and illustrated two travelogues (published 1812 and 1818) about his years in Persia as part of a British diplomatic mission.

Equally important in the context of Anglo-Persian diplomacy is a consideration of Mirza Abul Hasan Khan (1776-1845), who in 1809-10 traveled with Morier to England as the Persian ambassador with orders from the Qajar shah to finalize the treaty between the two nations. An exotic arrival in Georgian London, the mirza had his portrait painted by Thomas Lawrence and William Beechey, and he kept his own travel journal known as the Hayratnamah, or Book of Wonders. The mirza’s experiences in London can be seen as a counterpoint to Morier’s life in Persia, an opportunity to understand—and misunderstand—each other’s cultures in the pursuit of diplomacy. This paper will consider these portraits and travelogues as documentation of Anglo-Persian diplomacy in British art during the Napoleonic wars.

Portal 7

Portal 7: Quebec City (24 May 2014)

(For other works in my Portals series, click here.)

A door just opened on a street--

    I, lost, was passing by--

An instant's width of warmth disclosed,

    And wealth, and company.

The door as sudden shut, and I,

     I, lost, was passing by,--

Lost doubly, but by contrast most,

     Enlightening misery.

-- Emily Dickinson, Life series, Poem CXI

Maya Angelou

It was just 8 days ago that the world received news the great African-American writer Maya Angelou had died at the age of 86, having just celebrated her last birthday on April 4th. Her death struck me cold, and it has bothered me since. It's not because we are both Aries and I think we are kindred souls (I wouldn't dare compare myself to her genius). Nor am I troubled that she had died too young, or because I thought I "knew" her in some way. I'm saddened because the world will no longer be graced with the power of her voice and the power of her words. Her last message on Twitter, dated May 23rd, was as strong a message as any she had ever written and spoken: "Listen to yourself and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God." I can still hear in my head her recitation of the inaugural poem "On the Pulse of Morning" in 1993--A Rock. A River. A Tree.--and its final stanza, resonant with hope:

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.

These past 8 days I have been distressed by her death. I have felt a rivulet of emotion gurgling beneath the surface of my mind and my heart. I have been in mourning, and I only just realized this fact a little while ago. I never had the honor or privilege of meeting Maya Angelou, but there was always something about her voice and her words that have struck me. I am not alone; she has impacted many people's lives. But I realize that I am mourning the loss of a generation and a past and an understanding of the power of words, how when written from the heart and the mind, and spoken from the soul, words have the power to make a difference on a level that transcends basic textuality. Maya Angelou wasn't a perfect woman. She was something better. She was a human being, just like you and me, someone who made mistakes and learned from them, someone who knew that through our creative minds and bodies, one can make a small difference in this world, a difference that can enact positive change, hope, and love. Watch this short video interview with Maya Angelou that Ann Curry did about 12 years ago. You will quickly understand what I mean.

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Solomon's Vision

On Monday, February 10, 2014, Bonhams Los Angeles sold at auction a rare book that anyone who is a follower of Simeon Solomon (1840-1905) and the Pre-Raphaelites would have loved to own…including me. However, it was clearly above my income bracket, as it sold for the amazing price of $17,500! The good news about this is that I know who the winning buyer was, and I’m delighted to hear this person was successful in the bid, for this treasure of a book will go to a good home and be available for scholars in the near future. The seller had been in touch with my fellow Solomaniac Carolyn Conroy and me about this book for a few months already, so we were very eager to know how things would progress with this sale.

The image you see here is the cover of the book, A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep, written by Solomon and published by F. S. Ellis for him in 1871 (i.e. self-published with Ellis). There were a small number of these beautifully-bound copies of his prose-poem published at the time, mostly for him to give away to his friends, so they are already unique on the market. (A search in WorldCat shows that only 16 libraries in the US, Canada, and the UK have copies.) What makes this particular copy even more special is that it was the one owned by the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909). Inside, it is inscribed in the author’s handwriting: “With S. Solomon’s affectionate regards / to his friend, A. C. Swinburne / March 1871.” As a personal copy given by the author to his friend, it’s a lovely complement to another copy that once belonged to the painter Edward Burne-Jones, which is now at the University of Rochester.

Solomon and Swinburne were for many years a “dynamic duo” in 1860s Pre-Raphaelitism. They probably met through Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Burne-Jones around 1862, and the two young men quickly took a liking to one another, Solomon (photo right) a Jewish youth with unkempt hair, a beard, and sad eyes, Swinburne a slender fop with a bush of red hair (photo below). One of the most audacious anecdotes ever told about them is that Rossetti came home one day to discover Swinburne chasing Solomon down the stairs, and both of them were naked. All that said, it is doubtful they were ever lovers. Biographers tend to see Swinburne as an auto-erotic who indulged in flagellation and birching. But combined with Solomon’s homosexuality, history saw fit to mix the two as sexual deviants of the Victorian era. Solomon is credited these days with being one of the first artists to depict the ancient Greek poetess Sappho as a lesbian (see, for instance, the Tate's Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene), and this imagery was clearly part of the working association he had with Swinburne, who wrote poetry about Sappho in a similar way. Solomon also illustrated Swinburne’s birching tales, such as Lesbia Brandon, drawings one can see in the collections of the British Library. With their friendship blooming, Solomon spent the 1860s painting provocative male figures and exhibited them at the Royal Academy and the Dudley Gallery, while Swinburne scandalized readers with the first edition of his Poems and Ballads (1866) with odes written for and about sado-masochistic women.

A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep is seen today as an early example of gay literature, and indeed it was republished in its entirety most recently in Chris White’s edited anthology Nineteenth-Century Writings on Homosexuality: A Sourcebook (Routledge, 1999). Expressing the physical and emotional angst of different types of love, Solomon’s text has come to be seen as a paean to same-sex passion at a time when one could not express this kind of love in society. At the time of its publication, however, his prose-poem was seen by reviewers as an artist’s statement for his highly symbolic, personalized imagery that drew on ancient mysticism—ephebic gods of love, angels, and love-struck youths—figures that populated his paintings such as Love in Autumn and Sacramentum Amoris and often left viewers confused as to what they meant. Discouraging reviews of the prose-poem appeared in the Athenaeum and the Jewish Chronicle, but John Addington Symonds (later a champion for same-sex passion) wrote a laudatory review in the Academy. Swinburne also wrote a review (at Solomon’s request) and it appeared in the first issue of the Dark Blue. Sadly, Solomon was less than pleased with Swinburne’s review, concerned that it gave the wrong impression of Solomon’s symbolic meaning. In retrospect it seems safe to speculate from some of their letters that this may have been the beginning of the rupture in their friendship.

After Solomon’s arrest in 1873 for homosexual crimes, Swinburne was among his former friends who outright rejected and distanced himself from Solomon, probably fearing for his own public reputation. Years afterward, when he was desperate for money, Solomon reportedly tried to sell off some of Swinburne’s more salacious letters, for which the now-reformed and alcohol-temperate Swinburne never forgave him. Swinburne’s letters to Solomon have never been found and probably were destroyed at some point. However, many of Solomon’s letters to Swinburne do still exist and were published in a few books, most recently Terry Meyers’s edited Uncollected Letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Pickering & Chatto, 2005). The letters reveal hints of their secret adventures, occasionally written in coded language. More boldly in 1871, just two months after the publication of Vision, Solomon wrote letters to Swinburne about the trial of the famous cross-dressers Thomas Ernest “Stella” Boulton and FrederickWilliam “Fanny” Parke. The friendship of Solomon and Swinburne lasted less than a decade, but it produced a fruitful, creative relationship that clearly benefited both of them in art and literature. This particular copy of Vision that has just been sold is rather special then. It records a moment in time at the apex of their relationship when this talented duo respected one another and were close, actively learning from one another. After this moment, things changed, and this book and its inscription now forever commemorate a relationship where each was able to say, for a short period of time, “affectionate regards” to a friend.

UPDATE 3/2/14: I can now announce with some excitement who won the auction for this rare copy of Solomon's 1871 prose-poem, dedicated to Swinburne. The book now resides in the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library. Mark Samuels Lasner has spent much of his life amassing one of the best private collections of Victorian literature, manuscripts, and drawings. He has been incredibly generous in providing access to works in his collection for researchers (myself included), and he has exhibited his collection widely to encourage further scholarship. His long-term plan of making the collection accessible through the University of Delaware Library means scholars worldwide will be able to have access to these rare and excellent items for ages to come. I can't think of a better home for this special copy of Solomon's little book.

Thanksgiving and Swinburne?

The following was today's Daily Literary Quote:
"From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea."

I was surprised to see this quote in relation to Thanksgiving, because it has absolutely nothing to do with our American holiday except for the word itself. (I guess it's hard to find poems that have to do with turkeys, Pilgrims, and being grateful.) The quote comes from a poem entitled "The Garden of Proserpine" and is about Hades, the ancient Greek land of the dead, and its reigning queen Proserpine, who's described elsewhere in the poem as having "cold immortal hands" that she uses to welcome newly dead men. Fun stuff, huh? (You can read the full text of the poem by clicking here.) The author of the poem is the Victorian writer Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), whom you see here at the age of 22 or 23 when he was painted by William Bell Scott (image courtesy of the Victorian Web). As you can see, he had a small frame and outrageous, flaming red hair. A talented poet, he socialized with the Pre-Raphaelites. He loved to drink and had a reputation for indulging in a sexual life that included going to a whorehouse that specialized in flagellation (i.e., he liked to get whipped). He even reputedly chased Simeon Solomon, both of them naked, down the staircase at Dante Gabriel Rossetti's house in London. And people think the Victorians were prudes! I wrote about Rossetti and Swinburne for my master's thesis a while back, concentrating on paired examples of the fatal woman motif (she's such a stunner that her beauty overpowers and ultimately destroys men). Examples include Lucrezia Borgia, Venus, Lilith, and Proserpine. This year happens to be the 100th anniversary of Swinburne's death, and there were a few academic events to commemorate it, but Swinburne still isn't well known outside the world of Victorianists, which is shame, because his poetry is rather titillating, and was considered quite scandalous when his first edition of Poems and Ballads was published in 1866

Happy Thanksgiving to my readers! I am grateful for your encouragement, support, and comments about bklynbiblio, so keep them coming.

Review: Inaugural Arts Performances

During the inauguration on Tuesday, there were three events related to the arts: Aretha Franklin (pictured above) singing "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," a quartet performing "Air and Simple Gifts," and Elizabeth Alexander reciting her poem "Praise Song for the Day." Overall, they were successful, but I'm not convinced they were all performed to their best. Few could argue that Aretha is one of the queens of soul music. We all love Aretha, and her performance of the American patriotic standard we all sang in grammar school was excellent. Her command over the piece was most evident in the third verse where she used her voice to repeat in every imaginable melodic way the words "let freedom ring," recitative-style as in Baroque opera. But what will we remember best about her performance? That amazing hat that she wore, carrying herself in the tradition of Southern black women wearing their best hats to church (The New York Times called it "an outsized, glamorized church-lady hat"). Word has come out in the news that both Franklin's performance and that of the quartet were partly prerecorded. Franklin sang, but the music and background chorus was prerecorded (well, that was a bit obvious, since a chorus was nowhere in sight). The quartet's performance of John Williams's "Air and Simple Gifts" was quite beautiful, even if the Obama children were getting a bit restless. Williams is best known to people for his instrumental scores to blockbuster movies like Star Wars. Apparently the version of "Air and Simple Gifts" we heard was prerecorded as well. The quartet (Itzhak Perlman on violin, Yo-Yo Ma on cello, Gabriella Montero on piano, and Anthony McGill on clarinet) did actually perform live, but their sound was not amplified, so only those in the immediate vicinity could hear them. To be honest, I was shocked that they were doing it live because it was so cold. Having played piano for many years, I can attest to the near impossibility of performing any instrument with cold hands. Your limbs need to be limber (interesting word play there) in order to maximize musical output. So I'm not disturbed that it was prerecorded. I still have to download the piece though, because I do think it had some wonderful parts, although my memory tells me the clarinet was lost in the recording. Of course, the whole thing would have been better had Joshua Bell (one of my fantasy boyfriends) had been performing on the violin, but that's just my opinion. As for Elizabeth Alexander's poem, I admit I was disappointed by her delivery of it. She spoke clearly, articulating each word, but I felt that by doing that she ruined the overall tone of the poem itself. You're better off reading the poem on your own. It has more meaning that way. It follows in the Walt Whitman tradition of American patriotism and the middle/working classes. I don't think it's a great poem. Maya Angelou's inaugural poem for President Clinton in 1992 still gives me chills with its opening words, "A rock, a river, a tree." But Alexander's poem does still speak loudly about the idea of America, and how love and patriotism work hand-in-hand to help define an America we dream will come. The webpages for MSNBC have articles on each of the performances with video clips, so if you want to read/see more, click here for the quartet and click here for Alexander's poem and her reading. Below is the video of Aretha Franklin's performance (or click here to see it on MSNBC).

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