Inaugural Poems: Excerpts from former Inauguration Day poems

Excerpts from former Inauguration Day poems

The Gift Outright, for John F. Kennedy, 1961, by Robert Frost

The land was ours before we were the land's.

She was our land more than a hundred years

Before we were her people. She was ours

In Massachusetts, in Virginia,

But we were England's, still colonials...

(NB from the poem Frost recited from memory, not the one he had written for the occasion)

On the Pulse of Morning, for Bill Clinton, 1993, by Maya Angelou

You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot...

You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought

Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare

Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am the Tree planted by the River,

Which will not be moved.

Of History and Hope, for Bill Clinton, 1997, by Miller Williams

We have memorised America,

how it was born and who we have been and where.

In ceremonies and silence we say the words,

telling the stories, singing the old songs.

We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.

The great and all the anonymous dead are there.

We know the sound of all the sounds we brought.

From 'Ars Poetica: #100. I Believe', 2005, by Elizabeth Alexander

Poetry is what you find

in the dirt in the corner,

overhear on the bus, God

in the details, the only way

to get from here to there.

Poetry (and now my voice is rising)

is not all love, love, love,

and I'm sorry the dog died.

Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)

is the human voice,

and are we not of interest to each other?

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

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.

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