The inauguration was a deeply emotional event on many levels: the sea of people of all colors and backgrounds, the prayers, the music (from Aretha to Yo-Yo). Oh, and then there’s that little thing about celebrating our nation’s first black president. I was moved by it all, but I was especially affected by Elizabeth Alexander’s inauguration poem, “Praise Song for the Day.” I’m not a poetry scholar, but I was struck by several lines from the poem, as well as Ms. Alexander’s beautiful recitation of her work. “We encounter each other in words,” the poet writes, “words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.”
EbonyJet.com has a positive reflection on the poem. Ah, but poetry is a very subjective thing, which is why Ms. Alexander got a few negative reviews, too. Critics like this one and this one take Ms. Alexander to task for, among other things, being “too prosy.” This AP review gets in a few jabs while offering a brief history of the inaugural poem.
If you stuck around long enough to hear it, what did you think? Did you like it, or did it feel like she was trying too hard? Check out the text below and video above, if you missed it yesterday.
Praise Song for the Day |
by Elizabeth Alexander |
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. |
I liked it. Everyone was too gabby where I was the first time around, but when I could pay attention watching again in the evening, I realized that it was very moving and full of meaning.
The best line: “Love beyond marital, filial, national.”
I think Obama understands this and lives by it. And it is profoundly scriptural. I wrote to a friend last night:
“Maybe Obama is the first Christian president?”
Meg
I’m among those who didn’t like it. Too much of the lines didn’t make a lot of sense. One review I read commented that you don’t make music with a boom box, you play other people’s music (c.f the line about making music with wooden spoons).
And the thudding recital she did wasn’t anything that showcased the poem to its best. I think she had a pattern of reading three words at a time & pausing, as I recall.
I couldn’t see a theme or a comprehensive dialogue in the poem either, and while Alexander has been quoted as saying she likes the form & shape of words best, even that wasn’t particularly lyrical, special, or beautiful.
I liked it as she was reading it. After reading the text above, I still really love the message of the poem.
I think most people were critical because they wanted a Maya Angelou type reading. I thought she could have put more expression into it too, but people have different styles of reading.
Thanks for posting!
I enjoy the content of the poem. I think that the words were rich, challenging and inspiring. However it is not a poem I will read often or take special measure to remember.
I wasn’t drawn in to her reading. Her cadence seemed awkward. From reading the poem it seems as if it is a poem better read than spoken.
I also think, that it was a difficult sell at the inauguration because the poems was written for poetry or literature lovers. For many, I believe it was packed with large and somewhat unfamiliar words. Though I understand her imagery and her literary technique this poem is one that must be thought about deeply in order to even gain a remnant of understanding. A poem that spoke of the same deep emotion, but perhaps more lyrical and less – seemingly – obtuse would have been better accepted.
Wow, these are excellent critiques. I especially appreciate the observation that the poem may be better understood when read rather than heard. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed Ms. Alexander’s delivery. There was something understated yet profound about it, IMHO.
Thanks, everyone, for sharing your perspectives. I’ve been out of college for years, so it’s not often that I get to discuss poetry with my friends.
Good poetry is about taking an idea, thought, feeling, or experience and presenting it in a creative package that takes some effort on the part of the reader/listener to understand. I admit to not enjoying her reading of it during the ceremony. But, I became a fan of the poem after reading it later online. It may have something to do with her interpretation.
I believe most poets aren’t the best oral interpreters of their own work. They already experience the internal emotion associated with the piece, so they’re able to “feel” the meaning without extra effort. As opposed to an actor or other secondary reader who has to determine what they think the poem says, then figure out how they’re going to communicate it to the audience. Unless the original author gives a lot of thought outside themselves, I think they typically miss giving a fitting presentation.
Regarding public response to the poem: While most people were still scratching their head over the poem, the conclusion of Rev. Lowrey’s prayer came immediately along and connected to the “poetic sense” most people have. To someone who’s not going back to think on the longer, deeper poem, Lowrey’s sing-song, rhyming close to the ceremony brought about the literal and figurative “Amen”. This created a greater feeling of collective unity than Ms. Alexander’s cerebral poem. Put the two on paper, side by side, and we’d probably all laugh at Lowrey’s (c’mon, even President Obama chuckled). But, a majority of people were applauding his prayer and dogging Alexander’s poem.
One final thought…If you watched the ceremony on one of the standard channels, go back and watch the pure CSPAN version. I always watch it for these kinds of public events. It’s straight video and open mics with no commentary. In comparison to the commentary where they talk over everything and tell you what to think. (Like the ABC version in the YouTube post.)
Hi Edward,
I didn’t like the poem at all.
Here’s why: I found the reading to be affected and, to my ears, school-marmish. There was no sense of drama or development. Each section was read with all the pinache of a warning label. I hear so many poets, nowadays, read like this. In poetry circles (some of them) they are referred to as robo-readers. I don’t know where they all learned to read like this, but it seems to be a free-verse affectation. If you were to buy a book on tape, and if the narrator read the book like this, I suspect you wouldn’t make it past page 2.
The skill of the poem itself was woefully dilettantish. 33 of her lines are end-stopped. A quick count shows 43 lines. That means that 76% of her lines are end-stopped. If she were writing a poem using meter, such a ratio would be immediately considered amateurish – even among amateurs. It shows a lack of skill and imagination. Poets were doing better than this 400 years ago. In a free-verse poem, this habit is inexplicable.
This perhaps only reflects my philosophy, but a poem reflects more than its subject matter. A paragraph in any given book can be poetic, but that doesn’t make it poetry. Likewise, Alexander’s poem is little more than lineated prose. As with *so* many “poets” of her generation and before, it’s poetic but it’s not poetry.
Great art takes a great audience. And the problem with modern poetry is that amateurish poets only hear from amateurish audiences – audiences who haven’t read or studied or know what great poetry is – they make themselves Tritons among minnows. If that sounds like an elitist argument, then that’s because it *is*. Great talent is elite. The great athletes in Basketball, Baseball or Football are all elites. Once you’ve seen a Michael Jordan, you know what great basketball is. If an audience has never seen a Jordan or Magic Johnson (or any of the greats), they’re not going to know what great basketball is. And nowadays few people know what great poetry is.
//All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues. //
There’s nothing original in any of this. These images are clichéd at best – trite at worst.
//patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.//
This is mere rhetorical padding. If it weren’t “in need of repair”, then they wouldn’t be “repairing the things”. The repetition of the phrase sounds satisfying and portentious but it’s vacuous. We always repair the things in need of repair. Hello.
//make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box//
The fact that one doesn’t “make music” with a boom-box has already been commented on. The missing articles are a poetic affectation – a mannerism that has itself become clichéd. Besides that, the lines evoke nothing. There is no sense of sound despite the reference to music.
//A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.//
There is nothing evocative in these lines. No color. No smell. No touch. No taste. The only sense used in these lines is sight. It’s hard to even call this poetic. Nothing separates it from the daily prose of the newspaper. There is a paucity of imagination.
//We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth,//
“Spiny” is perhaps the only glimmer of poetic talent in the entirety of the piece.
Between the lines beginning “Say it plain…” and ending with “pre-empt grievance”, there is not a single evocative image. There is no sense of touch, taste, smell, etc… The descriptions are abstract and intellectual. The only descriptor that hints at something poetic is “glittering edifices ” – but we are given nothing more. This isn’t poetry. It’s prose, and flavorless prose at that. It might be suitable, as others have said, for an essay.
//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.//
“Sharp sparkle” is another stab at something poetic, but barely rises above mundane. When all the poetic devices are considered, the many that a great poet can call on, a clever adjective is all that Alexander musters. It’s almost too much for her. She falls back into cliché with brink, brim and cusp – offering us nothing novel but an asyndetic listing one after the other, as though they were a few final bricks.
Interestingly, I’ve seen many versions of this poem on-line. And by versions I’m referring to lineation. Even those who favor the poem don’t know how to lineate it. Why should they? It’s prose.
Sometime this week a may work up a formal critique of the poem but this, at least, is a poet’s opinion of Alexander’s poem.
Dear upinvermont,
Wow, thanks for your extended critique. Very enlightening and informative. Personally, I like what Alexander did with the poem (especially in that moment last Tuesday), but I appreciate your analysis and deconstruction of the poem’s technical and artistic shortcomings. Though I still think poetry is ultimately a subjective art, I also respect the fundamental aspects of what makes good poetry, so I’m grateful for your excellent critique.
Ed G.
Thanks Edward,
Reading my comment after the fact, I might have been a little more measured about it.
Your response was generous.
I ended up writing a post based on the comment over at another blog (one that I share with another blogger). It’s a little more restrained.
I guess upinvermont gave you what you were looking for. 🙂
I’ve been looking for this exact information on this subject for a while.