Yale professor and Pulitzer prize winning poet Elizabeth Alexander read the poem she wrote at today's inauguration ceremony. The prose poem, entitled "Praise Song for the Day" has met with mixed reviews. Many poets wanted more time to review the actual text, stating that Alexander's flat delivery really didn't do the poem justice.
One criticism that we heard several times was that Alexander used pedestrian prose: she used everyday language and common phrases that seemed out of place at such an important event. We disagree. We thought her phrasing, rhythm and imagery were perfect for the occasion, evoking the themes that the new president has expressed many times on the campaign trail.
We do admit to wondering what the reaction would have been had the poem been read by a well-known, talented actor, say, Morgan Freeman. He has the perfect voice to create mental images of the many American voices the poem discusses and to really sell the poem's last line of hope and optimism. We think it would have brought the house down.
Here's the video of Professor Alexander reading her poem.
Here is the text of the poem:
Praise song for the day.
Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.
Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.
A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."
We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.
We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."
We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.
Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.
Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.
Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."
Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.
What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.
In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.
Elizabeth Alexander Hopes Inaugural Poem Will Give People a Moment of Pause
46-year-old Elizabeth Alexander was given the honor of creating and reading a special poem at the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. The BBC says Alexander hopes the poem she has written - and will read tomorrow - will give people a "moment of pause" - a moment to "stand and think."
When asked what she is hoping to accomplish on the day, her answer was instructive: "I am hoping to offer language that will give people a moment of pause. That there is almost a quiet pool in which they are able to stand and think for a moment. I think that's part of what poetry does. It arrests us".
The proof will, of course, be in the poetry.
Previous inaugural poets have not had the most impressive track records.
Indeed, Ms Alexander is only the fourth to fill the role. Robert Frost was the first, at John F Kennedy's inauguration in 1961. It wasn't his finest hour, as the sun and wind dazzled him so much that he abandoned the poem he had written for the occasion, and instead recited "The Gift Outright", which he knew by heart.
Robert Frost didn't read the poem he had intended to? Hopefully, Ms. Alexander won't be flustered by the weather tomorrow. It is supposed to be cold with a chance of flurries but no gusty winds.
Update 1-20-09: You can listen to Elizabeth Alexander's reading of the inaugural poem and see a transcript here.
Elizabeth Alexander has been selected to read a poem at Barack Obama's inaugural swearing-in ceremony on January 20th. She is a prize-winning poet at Yale University. Her website can be found here.
It is the first time that "poetry's old-fashioned praise," as Robert Frost called it, will be featured at the swearing-in since 1997.
"I am obviously profoundly honored and thrilled," she said. "Not only to have a chance to have some small part of this extraordinary moment in American history. . . . This incoming president of ours has shown in every act that words matter, that words carry meaning, that words carry power, that words are the medium with which we communicate across difference and that words have tremendous possibilities, and those possibilities are not empty."
Alexander will be only the fourth poet to read at an inaugural swearing-in ceremony. Here's the other three:
Robert Frost read at John F. Kennedy's in 1961
Maya Angelou read at Bill Clinton's in 1993
Miller Williams, read at Clinton's second inauguration in 1997
Elizabeth Alexander 