Elizabeth Alexander: "Praise song for the day"

Responses to Inaugural Poem 2009

"...Then God smiled And the light broke..."

For me, Elizabeth Alexander's poem compares to my favorite, James Weldon Johnson's "The Creation."  Alexander's poem is a "Simple Gift"; eloquent in feeling and tone, quietly political in its passion and globally accessible. Her poem is one which will make mischievous 9th grade boys sit up in their seats, listen and maybe begin to contemplate the meaning of existence.  Her poem complemented the composition "Air and Simple Gifts" performed by Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Gabriela Montero and Anthony McGill (which I found nearly as moving as Rev. Joseph Lowery's prayer).

—Jeannette

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Everyone has a comment on Elizabeth Alexander's poem today. Many have comments about her "performance" or lack of. I found everyone comparing her words to Whitman, Frost and Angelou. However, one name that was not mentioned was Gil Scott-Heron. First, Alexander's poem should be connected to the closing lines of Barack Obama's speech. Can we get a coda here? Obama quotes George Washington—and it seems like a Valley Forge moment. It's Winter in America. Alexander's "Praise Song for the Day" echoes this:

Now let's bring in Gil and his deep voice, singing:

We seem to be trapped in winter right now. It is cold outside. Alexander's poem is not a blueprint for the future. It isn't the visionary poem I was thinking she might write. Others will do this. I found Alexander doing what Obama did in his address. Alexander stands in front of us as mother and comforter. An ordinary woman in extraordinary times? This complements the humility expressed by Obama.

For a moment Elizabeth Alexander is not a Yale professor: she is a woman going about her daily work. She hears the music created by the people. If her words seem more prose than poetry, it's because she is saying it plain. This is a praise song in which the words of remembrance do the heavy lifting. Alexander's poem informs us to celebrate the moment in its Buddhist and sweet Christian dress. Incorporated are the basic teachings of all good people:

If we are to pursue King's dream then we must continue to believe in the Beloved Community. Alexander reminds us of this. Yes the mightiest word is love. It seems to be Divine Love- for the poet yesterday told us to look beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light.

Maybe here is where Elizabeth Alexander becomes not Gwendolyn Brooks but Lucille Clifton. As I listened to Elizabeth recite her poem yesterday - I thought of the light that had come to my friend at this historical moment. I thought about how Aretha had the hat but Alexander had the poem.

And the poem guided us towards the light, and we were all moving forward—as one and as Americans.

In the Spring of our beginning—

—Ethelbert

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We cannot really comment on poems because of the nature of poetry. Either our hearts and souls receive the heart and soul of the poet or not or, sometimes, somewhere in between. Words and events are one and cannot be separated in poetry. Professor-poet Alexander's expression of scenes typical of African American communities in historic  collision, complementarily or coherence with other communities in the inaugural moment features three themes that touch my heart and soul.

The words between "Say it plain" and "work inside of" resonated with the slave labor experiences of several oppressed peoples in US history. In Washington City, the District of Columbia, where so many of their ilk worked, died and still keep insides clean, I felt those events-words strongly.

The next lines, between "Praise song" and "hand-lettered sign" reminded this listener/watcher of King's paragraph about "creative suffering" in the 28 August 1963 speech which I heard strongly and enabled me to love hers.

As a Biblical theologian, her ethical discussion between "Some live" and the end resonated with my feelings about the kind of love that feels "no need to preempt grievance" but enables us to walk "forward in that (love) light." 

    The poem for the day manifests a sense of what we call the eternal present moment now which always we live into every new beginning, every time we fix what is broken, to hearken back to her scene-setting lines very much in the spirit of the inaugural moment. Hers is a most appropriate poem for this event and I hope lots of school children who want to create poems will memorize and recite this fine work of Elizabeth Alexander.

—Ralph

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Wow. You know, I have been craving a discussion of Alexander's piece.
 
I couldn't wait to hear what she had to share. What pressure. Oh, I think I would have cracked. :) Millions of people all over the world listening. The President of the United States and our wonderful new First lady listening. Oh, my gosh.
 
I took for granted that the inaugural committee has a poet, I fully expected them to. I didn't realize how rare it was. I was really happy when I read that it would be Alexander. I respect her work. I especially loved that she dealt with Sarah Bartman in her book of poetry "Venus Hottentot."
 
So when she got up to read her poem, I demanded silence. I leaned on every word. We all know what it takes to compose, but to create because someone asked you to, well, that's no easy task. I think she worked hard to make sure that she would be understood. She could have written something--well, let's just say she could have written something that would have left many of us saying "huh, what?" while folks in the ivory tower would have been going wild with adulation.
 
I appreciate craft, honesty, colour, music, sweat, a little samba or pepper or protest in poetry. I don't think that a well-crafted poem has to be stiff. I don't think that poets who can work it on stage can't work it on the page. What am I saying? I appreciate the careful craft, the labour she put into every word. I have heard the poem twice and read it three times and thought about it while walking with my children. I read somewhere that a person can always go back to a really good poem and find something there that s/he didn't find the first or second or third time. I think that is this poem. Each time I encounter it, I fall deeper and deeper under its spell.
 
I have attached the poem and put the lines in bold that had me doing my Amen corner "mmmph," the first time I heard the poem.

This is a graceful piece.
 
And you know what? This is a side note, I guess, but she could have rocked that poem on stage had she read it another way. Yes, I am saying it. I believe that the message of this piece could have come across even stronger had Alexander let us see the poem sweat, and evoked that music that someone was trying to make somewhere, and pointed to the other side. This poem has the ability to jump off of the page. It wanted to leap and to live and to leave folks breathless. Or so I think.
 
Back to the point. "Praise Song for the Day." Subtle, powerful, beautiful poem. Ashe. one love,

—ekere  The work of Ekere Tallie

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Just walk around the Mall and the Capitol area and you stand on the backs of thousands of black slaves who built it and try to allow the emotional impact of all that to penetrate to the depths of your soul, as I and so many other working class people have done. Remember my personal history as the son and grandson of Coal Miners, Glass Workers, and my work on a Ranch, in a Glass Factory, a Grocery store, a Hide Cellar, a Meat Packing Plant and in Country and Rock and Roll bands and my acculturization among Mexicans, Creek, Cherokee, African American, Asian contexts and you may begin to understand. Maya Angelou's inaugural poem about rising manifested a bit more symbolically and dramatically than Elizabeth Alexander's the same essential movement and feeling.

The interpretation of poetry in a special and important sense is a meeting of histories of meanings which may collide, converge or coalesce as they mean something in a present moment now. 

Alexander's poetry does not aim at the sort of fire that burns off quickly leaving little if any residue. Instead, she aims to move people deeply, in the bowels of our feelings, where sometimes when the Zeitgeist and moment converge, we are transformed by poetry and not merely entertained or amused.

—Ralph

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I was moved more by the poem than by Obama's speech, as I expect many folks were, and I think there are good reasons for that. We were all (at least I was) waiting for the memorable  sentences in his that could be bumper-stickered, and he wisely denied us that. It was a fine and forceful speech, but he denied us the one-liner. He was saying, I won't be that easy; life is more complex than that, and this event is something transcendent that belongs to all of us. I won't have it reduced to an aphorism or a sound-bite.

So the poet steps in and gives words to the beauty around us and inside us, with words "spiny or smooth," and evokes the ordinariness of stitching a hem and making music with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum and "figuring it out at kitchen tables."

And stops you hard with that line "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.. and built the glittering edifices." She doesn't have to say that among those edifices is the White House.

And then against that hard, bitter line, the invocation  of "love beyond marital, filial, national, love that casts a widening pool of light," followed by that extraordinary final stanza that puts us all in the sharp sparkle of January cold "on the brink, on the brim, on the cusp," praising song and "walking forward in that light." That image of love as a widening pool of light is the gift she leaves us with. Our own gift.

—David

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I think her poem was a quiet storm that will be appreciated for years to come.

—slwest

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posted 22 January 2009