In Dominican Spanish la ñapa refers to "the little extra" added on at the end. Just when you thought you'd gotten all that you would get, along comes your ñapa, like a baker's dozen, with one more kiss, one more pastelito, one more mango at the mercado.

In Praise of Librarians

So, here's my web-ñapa, a poem in praise of librarians. I feel especially grateful to the wonderful folks at the Chicago Public Library, who did such a great job with In the Time of the Butterflies as the choice for One Book, One Chicago, this fall 2004. I'm in their debt! In fact, every book I write, I rely on the help of librarians, especially those at Middlebury College (Joy Pile is one of them!) and at my town library, Ilsley Public Library.

Librarians are the greatest. In my next life, I want to come back and be one of them!

click for: Book Summary

Why I Am in Love with Librarians

I love how they know things
only to pass them on,
how they fade into the faux-wood-paneled
walls of the reference room,
their faces hidden between the covers of books,

how they look up only to help you:
What is the capital of Afghanistan?
How do the Maori bury their dead?
Who invented Barbie? How many
were murdered in Guatemala in '84?

-- every query worthy of their attention,
any questioner taken seriously,
curiosity the only requirement.
I love how they listen, their lined faces opening,
their eyes already elsewhere:

scanning a plain for the lights of a distant city,
hunting for bodies in the highlands,
searching the web for Barbie --
their minds like those flocks of little birds in winter
swooping over a landscape, looking, looking.

And always when they get back to you,
that sweet smile on their faces,
pride and deep affection for what can be known,
as if Barbie's invention
or the tally of the massacred

could save you, could save the world!
And who knows if Stalin or Hitler
had spent their youth in the library,
history might be rewritten,
re-catalogued by librarians?

Curiosity sends us out
to a world both larger and smaller
than what we know and believe in
with a passion for finding an answer
or at least understanding our questions.

That road is paved with librarians,
bushwhackers, scouts with string
through the labyrinths of information,
helpers who disappear the moment
you reach your destination.

for Joy Pile

Copyright © Julia Alvarez 2004-2010.
All rights reserved. No further duplication, downloading or
distribution permitted without written agreement of the author
(please contact my agent, Susan Bergholz).

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