Some excellent news yesterday: Allan Monga, the young asylum seeker from Zambia who won the Maine state Poetry Out Loud competition, triumphed in his lawsuit against the National Endowment for the Arts and will be going to D.C. for the nationals. The judge was firm in his decision, citing a Supreme Court case verifying that all children, no matter what their immigration status, have the right to a full education. He compared Allan's situation to one of a soccer player who would be allowed to play on the school team but not allowed to compete in the championship. He then asked, "Is this what we as Americans stand for?"

I feel so happy about this, not least because I had my teeth gritted in preparation for the decision to go the other way. As I've said before, I understand that a poetry-recitation contest is a tiny blip in the broader tale of misfortune, disenfranchisement, rejection, and unfairness. But of course I took it personally, having been a state judge and thus responsible for the decision that brought Allan to this point. He deserved to win, he did win, and now he will move on to the next level.

Yesterday was altogether an immersion into the conversation of poetry. In the morning I had a long quiet visit with Baron Wormser before he headed home to Vermont; in the afternoon I sat with the guys in our community writing project and listened to them talk about each other's writing, share thoughts, make jokes, ask questions, wonder about their purpose in life. And then one of them, an asylum seeker from Angola, shouted, "I want to open a center for everyone, and I would call it Come In!"

Yes, we all agreed; yes, we all laughed. Yes. That's the place we need to be.