Ode to Elizabeth Alexander, Barack Obama's Inauguration Poet (2008)

Ode to Elizabeth Alexander, (jjc-2008)
Inaugural Poet, Barack Obama 2008

First things first, congratulations on your selection!
You deserve this great honor. Your body of works is your proof
You are ready for the task. All you have to do is to get it done
Are you scared? How are you generating these great ideas for the occasion?
You may not need my advice now. It would send you all the way up to the roof
Bear in mind that this event is not all about you, but it depends on your tone

===================
Remember your own words to NPR's Melissa Block as you are getting ready to compose and recite this poem.

"I've been trying out phrases and ideas and meditating and looking through scraps of things that I've been noting," she says. "It's been a time of tremendous feeling and tremendous thought."

"In that moment, really I am the vessel for the poem," she says. "It's not about the poet at that moment, it's about the poem. So the pressure — the challenge — is to write a poem that can serve … all of those expectant, gathered millions and to let the poem be what calms my nerves when I am up there. To let myself remember that I am there to deliver these words and these words have been commissioned to deliver a very, very amazing moment."

Maya Angelou's Inauguration Poem Video for Bill Clinton in 1993

Yale Poet Elizabeth Alexander Prepares Poem To Read to Thrill at Obama Inauguration: Who is She?

What a great honor for this professor to be selected to read her own composition on January 20, 2009! Her dream will finally come true.

Elizabeth Alexander, professor of African-American studies at Yale University, was chosen by President-elect Barack Obama to compose and read a poem for his inauguration on Jan. 20.

"I'm completely thrilled and deeply, deeply honored," Alexander said Thursday.

Alexander's mother is a historian specializing in African-American women's history at George Washington University. Her father was a presidential civil rights adviser and secretary of the Army.

"The civil rights movement was fully alive in our home," Alexander said.

Even though she is a friend of the Obamas, it is her experience, craft and contributions that helped her get selected for this honor.

Check this out here or go to her website: http://www.elizabethalexander.net/home.html

"Elizabeth Alexander is a poet, essayist, playwright, and teacher. She is the author of four books of poems, The Venus Hottentot, Body of Life, Antebellum Dream Book, and American Sublime, which was one of three finalists for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. She is also a scholar of African-American literature and culture and recently published a collection of essays, The Black Interior. She has read her work across the U.S. and in Europe, the Caribbean, and South America, and her poetry, short stories, and critical prose have been published in dozens of periodicals and anthologies...."


Elizabeth Alexander is a very accomplished writer, poet and essayist. She will deliver for this great occasion. In an interview on NPR last week, she said she is going to prepare a short but very intense poem.

Elizabeth Alexander was born in 1962 in Harlem, New York, and grew up in Washington, D.C. She received a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. from Boston University (where she studied with Derek Walcott), and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania.

Her collections of poetry include American Sublime (Graywolf Press, 2005), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Antebellum Dream Book (2001); Body of Life (1996); and The Venus Hottentot (1990).

Alexander’s critical work appears in her essay collection, The Black Interior (Graywolf, 2004). She also edited The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks (Graywolf, 2005) and Love’s Instruments: Poems by Melvin Dixon (1995). Her poems, short stories, and critical writing have been widely published in such journals and periodicals as The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Callaloo, The Village Voice, The Women's Review of Books, and The Washington Post. Her work has been anthologized in over twenty collections, and in May of 1996, her verse play, Diva Studies, premiered at the Yale School of Drama...."

Barack Obama Commissioned a Poem from Yale Professor, Elizabeth Alexander: Who is This Poet?

Mr. Barack Obama's selection of a poet such as Elizabeth Alexander for his inauguration shows that the arts will be important to his administration. At least, for a day, poetry will be on everybody's mind. January 20 will reveal the poem that Ms. Elizabeth has been working to celebrate the occasion. This occasional poem should also appeal to the future, said the bard of the south Side.

Who is Ms. Alexander?

Ms. Alexander was born in Harlem, where her father’s family was rooted, but grew up in Washington, where she attended Georgetown Day School and Sidwell Friends, then Yale. Politics, she said, was “in the drinking water in my house.” Her father, Clifford, was a civil rights adviser to President Lyndon B. Johnson and was instrumental in the passage of the Voting Rights Act. He was the first black to be named secretary of the Army and chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Her mother, Adele, teaches African-American women’s history at George Washington University. Her brother, Mark, teaches at Seton Hall Law School and served as policy director to Bill Bradley’s presidential campaign in 2000. An expert in campaign finance, he was a senior adviser to Mr. Obama’s campaign and is a member of his transition team.

Ms. Alexander has been on the faculty of several universities, including the University of Chicago, where she taught creative writing and African-American literature and won the Quantrell Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching. It is there in the 1990s that she met Barack and Michelle Obama.

======================

Barack Obama, Elizabeth Alexander, Inaugural Poet, Inauguration Day 2009, Maya Angelou, Obama Inauguration, Obama Inauguration Poet, Obama Poet, Obama's Inaugural Poet, Poet And Obama And Inaguration, Poetry, The Poetic Life, Media News