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

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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."

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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