The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
SHOW: NEWSHOUR 6:00 PM EST
July 4, 2007 Wednesday

BBC Reporter Alan Johnston is Freed in Gaza

by Gwen Ifill, Margaret Warner, Ray Suarez, Judy Woodruff, Gregory
Djanikian

GUESTS: Steven Erlanger, Lorne Craner, Nikolas Gvosdev, Amr Hamzawy,
Anne- Marie Slaughter, Michael Beschloss

Kidnapped BBC reporter Alan Johnston was freed Wednesday after being
held captive for 114 days in Gaza. Ray Suarez discusses the spread of
democracy around the globe with guests. As part of the NewsHour`s
occasional series on poetry, poet Gregory Djanikan shares his poem
about an immigrant family`s Fourth of July celebration.

[parts omitted]

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GWEN IFILL: Finally tonight, some Fourth of July reflections from
poet Gregory Djanikian. He directs the creative writing program at
the University of Pennsylvania. His fifth and latest volume of poetry
is "So I Will Till the Ground."

GREGORY DJANIKIAN, Poet: My name is Gregory Djanikian, and I was born
in Alexandria, Egypt, of Armenian parentage, and came to this country
when I was 8 years old. I spent my boyhood in a small town in
Pennsylvania, Williamsport, home of the little league, and my
acculturation to this country occurred in some ways on the baseball
fields of that town.

Now I live near Philadelphia, a city which saw the founding of this
nation. I`d like to read a poem called "Immigrant Picnic," which
describes a July Fourth get-together of my immigrant family, who,
with American families across the nation, contribute to the
celebration of independence.

The poem also describes how we might contribute to that great melting
pot that is the English language, that, for many of us who have come
from different countries, our difficulties with American idioms often
lead to unexpected syntactic constructions and surprising turns of
phrase which enrich the language and by which we all are enriched.

"Immigrant Picnic."

It`s the Fourth of July, the flags are painting the town, the plastic
forks and knives are laid out like a parade.

And I`m grilling, I`ve got my apron, I`ve got potato salad, macaroni,
relish, I`ve got a hat shaped like the state of Pennsylvania.

I ask my father what`s his pleasure and he says, "Hot dog, medium
rare," and then, "Hamburger, sure, what`s the big difference," as if
he`s really asking.

I put on hamburgers and hot dogs, slice up the sour pickles and
Bermudas, uncap the condiments. The paper napkins are fluttering away
like lost messages.

"You`re running around," my mother says, "like a chicken with its
head loose."

"Ma," I say, "you mean cut off, loose and cut off being as far apart
as, say, son and daughter."

She gives me a quizzical look as though I`ve been caught in some
impropriety. "I love you and your sister just the same," she says,
"Sure," my grandmother pipes in, "you`re both our children, so why
worry?"

That`s not the point I begin telling them, and I`m comparing words to
fish now, like the ones in the sea at Port Said, or like birds among
the date palms by the Nile, unrepentantly elusive, wild.

"Sonia," my father says to my mother, "what the hell is he talking
about?" "He`s on a ball," my mother says.

"That`s roll!" I say, throwing up my hands, "as in hot dog,
hamburger, dinner roll…"

"And what about roll out the barrels?" my mother asks, and my father
claps his hands, "Why sure," he says, "let`s have some fun," and
launches into a polka, twirling my mother around and around like the
happiest top,

and my uncle is shaking his head, saying "You could grow nuts
listening to us,"

and I`m thinking of pistachios in the Sinai burgeoning without end,
pecans in the South, the jumbled flavor of them suddenly in my mouth,
wordless, confusing, crowding out everything else.

GWEN IFILL: For more poems by Gregory Djanikian, to see and hear
other poets, and to sign up for our poetry podcast, visit our Web
site at PBS.org.

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