The Star-Spangled Banner

The Star-Spangled Banner, Denise Duhamel's sixth book of poems, is about falling in love, American-style, with someone who is not American. In the title poem, a small American girl mishears the first line of ""The Star-Spangled Banner"" as ""José, can you see?"", which leads her to imagine a foreign lover of an American woman dressed in a star-spangled gown. The misunderstandings caused by language recur throughout the book: contemplating what ""yes"" means in different cultures; watching Nickelodeon's ""Nick at Nite"" with a husband who grew up in the