Home » Inaugural verse: poetry and power all the way

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Inaugural verse: poetry and power all the way — 26 Comments

  1. Damn, with your sort of taste in poetry I’m not sure why you think “In Flanders Fields” isn’t all that great artistically. I mean, I suppose you must be a big fan of regular meter, but “In Flanders Fields” breaks the conventions just enough to be lyrical, in my book.

  2. Neo, you are so right about this. I watched Alexander reading her poem and was immediately struck by her complete lack of ability to perform a dramatic reading (I thought that was part of being a poet). Then I read the text and realized that no one on earth could have rescued such a piece of trash.

  3. I had the thought while struggling not to listen to her sheaf of wet garbage that it was ironic that the first cultural act of the Obama administration was to kill off poetry.

  4. It was vomitous, stultifying, unedifying, hackneyed, assinine.

    The crowning assininity of a vomitously stultifying parade of hackneyed unedifications. Shitty.

  5. As I listened to that prosaic fluff yesterday, I also was drawn back to the memory of Robert Frost struggling with his manuscript and then going on to recite another poem. I didn’t know the story of how Frost and JFK were connected. Thanks for providing that.

  6. You mentioned Ogden Nash so there a couple of his that might have fit the occasion –

    A couple which expresses my thoughts on the current president and the power in congress

    The Wasp
    by Ogden Nash

    The wasp and all his numerous family
    I look upon as a major calamity.
    He throws open his nest with prodigality,
    But I distrust his waspitality.

    Everybody Tells Me Everything
    by Ogden Nash

    I find it very difficult to enthuse
    Over the current news.
    Just when you think that at least the outlook is so black that it can grow no blacker, it worsens,
    And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.

    It could be the reason poets seem to fail in these situations is being in such close proximity to politicians – causing them to make an attempt at some grand noise instead of quietly speaking the truth.

  7. Great back story. I did not know it either.

    As a child, my impression was that he could not read the poem in the blustery air and bright sunlight, and instead, put down the sheaf of paper, and recited it by heart.

    But what he really did was to go straight to his encore. He had intended to read “The Gift Outright” following “Dedication” anyway.

    Always have a Plan B ready . . . even if it’s only the epilogue to Plan A!

  8. Here’s a version with line breaks as it apparently was written from a poet’s blog:

    PRAISE SONG FOR THE DAY: A POEM FOR BARACK OBAMA’S PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION

    Each day we go about our business,
    walking past each other, catching each other’s
    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 some one 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 thyself,
    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 pre-empt grievance.

    In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
    any thing 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

  9. The stanzad version reads somewhat better, though I still don’t care for it much. However I do prefer Alexander’s poem to Maya Angelou’s rambling and annoying mess for Clinton’s inauguration.

    Aside from the poem’s general slackness and triteness–which if you read the blog entry I linked earlier has not gone unnoticed even among poets–my big problem though is that I don’t hear myself included among the “we” Alexander repeatedly invokes.

    Why not? I’m an American too and the inauguration of an American president is surely a day for all Americans. But not as Elizabeth Alexander would have it. This sounds very much like blacks talking to other blacks about a “love beyond marital, filial, and national love.” Furthermore, it is a “love with no need to pre-empt grievance.” Hmm…what could that be about?

    If Obama’s election is all about becoming post-racial, could we–all of us, blacks included–move beyond race and start talking about that America which Obama says is not red or blue, or black or white? Or is that talk just a cover for the same-old, same-old, the “okey-doke” that Obama inveighed against earlier?

  10. I especially like the idea of poetry in praise to the common man, but only 4 common men even know what the hell it said.

    The irony is that “say it plain” is even in one verse.

  11. Dear Neo:

    May I humbly suggest a re-phrasing of your parenthesis?

    Before: (although Alexander and Angelou may be wonderful people, very great poets they are not)

    After: (although Alexander and Angelou may be very great, wonderful people, poets they are not)

  12. Oh heck, have you seen what Poets-Laureate, even the half-way decent ones have written? Terrible. That’s what you get in poetry to order. Kipling was not only a great poet but a man who refused all state honours: knighthood, poet-laureateship, even the Order of Merit though the King offered it personally. That is the way real artists should behave. He accepted honorary degrees and the Nobel Prize of literature – his one mistake in this field.

  13. Alexander’s inane poem was an embarassment to the Obama’s, but Lowry’s degenerate racism was a scandal.

    On the other hand Warren’s invocation, William’s music and Obama’s speak were all well-done

  14. It’s all pretty hollow , the whole shebang was hollow. Hollow, empty people, all with vain pretense. No original thought expressed by any, including the vapid Alexander. Why did the chicken….? covers it beautifully, Neo.

  15. Helen — Well, I give the recent US Poet-Laureates credit for trying hard to restore poetry to the mainstream…though not with particular success.

    I’m fond of Billy Collins, the 2000 PL, for his approachable whimsy. Neither WC Williams nor TS Eliot nor even Robert Frost are threatened, but at least Collins doesn’t take himself as seriously as Barbara Alexander seems to.

    Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep A Gun In The House

    The neighbors’ dog will not stop barking.
    He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
    that he barks every time they leave the house.
    They must switch him on on their way out.

    The neighbors’ dog will not stop barking.
    I close all the windows in the house
    and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
    but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
    barking, barking, barking,

    and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
    his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
    had included a part for barking dog.

    When the record finally ends he is still barking,
    sitting there in the oboe section barking,
    his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
    entreating him with his baton

    while the other musicians listen in respectful
    silence to the famous barking dog solo,
    that endless coda that first established
    Beethoven as an innovative genius.

    Billy Collins

  16. huxley: That’s a good one by Collins. I’m quite fond of his poetry—it manages to be pretty good poetry and often is simultaneously quite humorous, as well.

  17. Yes, Collins is pretty good! I don’t think anyone wants to uphold Collins as great, but on his own stubborm;u modest terms he accomplishes what he sets out to do. His poems are original, interesting, and often humorous. Unlike Alexander, Collins does not hint at greater depths than can be found.

    A film friend was recently explaining the idea of “termite art” as opposed to “white elephant art” put forth by Manny Farber:

    “Termite art,” on the other hand, has “no ambitions towards gilt culture” and “goes always forward eating its own boundaries.” The aim of termite art is “buglike immersion in a small area without point or aim, and, over all, concentration on nailing down one moment without glamorizing it. But forgetting this accomplishment as soon as it has been passed; the feeling that all is expendable, that it can be chopped up and flung down in a different arrangement without ruin.”

  18. Great poets can be great declamators, too. Another poet-laureate, Joseph Brodsky, has terrible accent, so many americans hardly could discern words, but he often made public recitals of his (and not only his) poems. As I read in many accounts of listeners, they all feel a profound drama simply in cadences of his voice; it was like a liturgy, which can emotionally elevate us even if conducted on unknown to listeners language.

  19. Pingback:Long Day « Slow Stagger

  20. I believe Ms. Alexander inadvertently left off the final line of her poem:

    “Burma Shave.”

    I liked Robert Frost as an Inaugural poet, but I thought Maya Angelou’s “poem” for the Inauguration was sheer crap and, in fact, can find no reason to see her as talented in any way, except for her Puffer fish way of inflating her importance.

    In this, she reminds me of another fraud, Margaret Meade, wielder of the staff or wisdom.

  21. Wolla Daldo: Maya Angelou’s first memoir, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” was, despite the somewhat cutesy title, an excellent book. By now that sort of story has become a cliche, but at the time it was groundbreaking. The rest of her work isn’t much, but for that one book I very much admire her.

  22. I’m still puzzing over the lines:

    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 pre-empt grievance.

    This is a curious kind of love: beyond love of spouse, family and nation, qualified only by its refusal to pre-empt grievance.

    Does this mean that America is finally off the hook for slavery and civil rights, or does it indicate that the measure of America will always be listening without pre-emption to grievance?

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