Comments on: The Inaugural Poem

By: michael robbins

michael robbins — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:14:15 +0000

Hell, the poem convinced me to never willingly go to a poetry reading again, ever.

By: Matt Mason

Matt Mason — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:29:02 +0000

Well, when I saw it on the page, I did like the poem. Especially considering she was asked to write it for, oh, a historic occasion and, oh, to follow Obama as a speaker… in those respects, she did a fine job.
I, as a writer, was mostly just excited that there would be a poet there. On national television. Reading to millions.
The only part I didn’t like, as some others have said, was the delivery. Not that she needs to juggle flame or wave her arms and dance… but it IS a poem written with feeling and filled with voices… none of which came across in how she read it. If you couldn’t hear her words, you would not think she was trying to say something inspirational to millions, it looked more like she was recalling all the things she bought at the grocery store that week.
And the whole time she read, imagined a massive counter at the bottom of the TV screen with numbers whizzing higher and higher to display the number of Americans watching this on TV who were confirming that they would never willingly go to a poetry reading. Ever.

By: Ian

Ian — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 23:02:34 +0000

I thought it was absolute garbage.

By: Gary B. Fitzgerald

Gary B. Fitzgerald — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:57:42 +0000

I took an early lunch last Tuesday in order to hear the inaugural poem. I had listened to an interview with Elizabeth Alexander the Sunday before and she wouldn’t reveal the content of her poem. I was intrigued.
I left early for lunch because I thought the poem would come before Obama’s speech, so I listened to his entire speech. I actually got in trouble for taking a long lunch because I waited for the poem. Needless to say, I was very disappointed that after the poem was announced another woman came on first to give yet another speech. It was about halfway through this speech before I realized that…this was the poem?
Well, I suppose, at least the Prose poetry people scored a point.

By: solar

solar — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 13:49:49 +0000

Readers might be interested in this Obama poem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvZ1AaZOnQo

By: Rich Villar

Rich Villar — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:23:47 +0000

Curious: What’s an Obama liberal, and what’s that got to do with one’s interpretation of Alexander’s poem? Or did I miss something? Are these the same people who thought OJ was innocent? Not trying to be flip, just genuinely curious.

By: Wanda Coleman

Wanda Coleman — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:03:28 +0000

I believe the Reverend Lowery was quoting from the Negro National Anthem, the lyrics by James Weldon Johnson, one of the finest Black voices to ever hold a pen:
Lift Every Voice And Sing
Lift every voice and sing, till earth and Heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.
Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet,
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered;
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.
I might be mistaken about this–but it is what I thought I heard. The Reverend provided a wonderful close to a remarkable ceremony, as was necessary.

By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 01:24:36 +0000

I, too, have non-poet friends who loved the poem. And I have friends who know little about poetry who thought it the cloying platitudinal disaster it is. Clearly, the criterion for writing a good inauguration poem is precisely not to write a good poem: rather, it must resonate with a great many people, almost all of whom will have little or no training or experience in the reading of poems. That may well be an excuse for stringing platitudes together in clunky lines that add up to less than the sum of most Hallmark cards. But it’s fair to also critique it as a bad poem. The most dispiriting thing about Obama liberals is that they are always ready to cluck their tongues at the slightest threat of realism, as though if we all wish hard enough, Obama will effect a transformation of the corporate state into a progressive paradise, in defiance of history & possibility.

By: Mary Meriam

Mary Meriam — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:46:58 +0000

“Poetry, in the end, is just as simple and naked and bereft and alone as it’s always been. It’s just words, set to a kind of music, which people remember and recite to themselves & each other.” (Henry Gould) 
“The poem’s argument was as hard to remember as its language; it dissolved at once into the circumambient solemnity. Alexander has reminded us of what Angelou’s, Williams’s, and even Robert Frost’s inauguration poems already proved: that the poet’s place is not on the platform but in the crowd, that she should speak not for the people but to them.”
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/01/20/adam-kirsch-on-elizabeth-alexander-s-bureaucratic-verse.aspx
Frederick Douglass
When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.
Robert Hayden

By: Emily Warn

Emily Warn — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:33:31 +0000

"From my non-scientific poll (sadly not conducted at parties like John's), everyone of my friends and family, none of whom are poets, liked or loved the poem, which was written for the most important historical event in recent American history. They will remember it as part of what made that event meaningful for them. They liked that the poem spoke plainly, that its historical recall contributed to the momentous day ("Say it plain: that many have died for this day."), that it wasn't afraid to speak about love. On reading it, I, too, can see some things to critique and much to praise, but on hearing my friends' comments, I wished that for once I could suspend my specialist training. Based on its purpose and the comments I heard, I think Praise Song for the Day wildly succeeded. Emily