Half-Jamaican, half-Ghanaian poet Kwame Dawes posts a lovely and atmospheric meditation on the occasion of Ghana's 50th anniversary of independence: “A more responsible poet, a genuinely nationalist writer, would have planned the publication of his next book to coincide with this date. He would have written an epic poem with a central character called Quackoo who will turn fifty tonight, and who carries in his body the narrative of a nation, its promising birth, its giddy childhood of sudden and dramatic growth, its turbulent preteen years of juvenile delinquency. . . “