A Toast to Divine Madness
(in the crown of the Statue of Liberty)
With this glass of champagne—I propose a toast to Divina Locura—Divine 
Madness that has always inspired the higher expectations of the great 
poets throughout the globe. And I propose raising to this magnificent 
crown—Divine Madness that, like the oppressed everywhere, has been 
kept down—in submission, in seclusion, deprivation, and silence—and has 
been kept down by the antithesis of Divine Madness, divine expectation, 
divine philosophy, and poetry—by the enemies of greatness and the lovers 
of entertainment who have spit in the eyes and slapped the cheeks of 
poetry and philosophy—with the cheapening of the heart—the cheapening 
of all that is high and noble—the cheapening of all the greatness, the 
magnificence, the beauty, the good, the noble, the suspension of the 
senses, the charisma, and the good energy that spells, through our good 
will, something good for America—something that makes America rise again 
from the tippy-top of the Yukon to the tippy-toe of la Tierra del Fuego.
Giannina Braschi, Excerpt from United States of Banana, 2011.
 
 
      