As most probably know, the inauguration of President Barack Obama took place this week, and the attention to it was incredibly large. Such events are always a big deal over here, but this one (in almost every way, and a few more) seemed somehow bigger. Most of the 'official' parts of it are the same each time, just being said and done by different people. The side stuff is always individualized, though. Miss Aretha Frankin sang (and *shoot me*, I was one of the few that wasn't so impressed with her as she performed, and I usually like her bunches - maybe it was that outrageous headwear she had perched on herself ). The music was exceptional. A nicely original and contemplative composition by John Williams called "Air and Simple Gifts" played by Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Gabriela Montero, and Anthony McGill. And then there was the "Inaugural Poem". I was looking forward to it a lot, expecting to be moved senseless by the power of the words it presented. Didn't happen. I thought it was (again, *shoot me*) even forgettable . But, then, comes Wednesday and somebody linked me up to where I could read it, assuring me that it was MUCH better than I thought. They were correct. It is pretty darned effective and works very well with the *perspective* of Inauguration Day (but still not Maya Angelou "great", though, if you ask me - as I make unfair comparisons ). So I thought I'd share the text of it. See what any of you fine folks think of it. It was written, and read, by Elizabeth Alexander.

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' 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 someone 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 thy self."

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 preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.


(Yeah. I like it much better each time I read it . But I still think Aretha Franklin's hat was an unforgivable mistake ....)

It IS better read than heard - I heard it on the radio and quite honestly thought it was dreadful.

Sorry, but Elizabeth Alexander is no Maya Angelou -either as a writer or a reader of her own work. The reading was laborious and had curious pauses in it. Not at all what I expected.

Loved the poem, was confused by the song as was to the tune of God Save the Queen.

Absolutely loved the hat without question, but I am a hat person.

I thought the poem was wonderful and reading it makes it more wonderful. I agree with ktstew, though, about the odd pauses when it was read. I figured the pauses were due to the speaker and microphone feedback and she was a little thrown off by the few second delay.

All I have to say about the poem is, well, meh. It's okay. Can't say I found it particularly stirring.

As for the song, at first I thought it was okay. Then it just went, as per Aretha's style, I suppose, over the top. But here it came off, well, not in a good way. At one point I actually cringed. The hat didn't bother me, although I certainly wouldn't wear it. I guess it was fine on her.

Possibly because that same tune also hosts our beloved song My Country Tis' Of Thee and has for many years. Every school kid knows it...or used to, anyway.

When that song was sung, I told my husband that I remember singing My Country Tis' of Thee immediately after saying the Pledge of Allegiance everyday when I was in school. They probably don't do that anymore.

We sang it after the Pledge, too. I didn't know it was the same tune as God Save the Queen, until I was probably, 12 years old!

Do they even say the Pledge in school, anymore? I hope so...

Either I've heard her reading her work before, or there are quite a few woman poets like her - that flat, non-melodic voice, that odd cadence, that ignoring of both the sense and the musical qualities of the words. Not at all what you would expect from a poet, who should be, I dunno, poetic?

I was wondering if anyone was going to comment on the inauguration, deciding not to for fear it would be considered too controversial. The silence astounded me.

So... I was disappointed when Ms. Alexander began to read since I was expecting a poem with at least meter if not rhyme. Then I decided to really listen, and while her message was good, the vehicle was so unexpected and, well, unpoetical, that it was hard to hear.

I also looked up the words, and they're great, but by my lights it's a prose poem that would go well in a coffee table book, not a dedicatory "Poem" for a "National Event."

The applause was not overwhelming, and I was embarrassed for the poet when she was immediately followed by a minister who launched into his prayer with the third stanza of James Weldon Johnson's stirring "Lift Every Voice and Sing."

Regarding public reading, I think it's unfair to expect a poet to also be a great declaimer. That's like expecting a composer to be a great singer. But that doesn't lessen the painful contrast between Alexander's lack in reading her lines and Lowery's cadences so typical of his race and profession.

I didn't think much of the poem, but I prefer traditional poems with meter, cadence, stanzas, - I know, very boring of me.

That particular poem also seemed awkwardly phrased and not very "inaugural". I wasn't expecting Emerson!
I just thought it was a very peculiar choice for the occasion.

So I reckon, then, the concensus here is the same I'm hearing elsewhere. The poem was (probably) better-than-OK. But not "inauguration great"? And the reader of it was the worst problem, most agree. I remember (in my long ago past) that poets reading their own words, even in amateur circles, was [at best] a 50/50 proposition. Half were so uncomfortable and/or unaccustomed to doing it, that it was painful to watch/hear them try. The other half put too much into it, it seemed. Gave it that emotional over-the-top presentation, I suppose, to help insure that their audience "got it". Then there were the rare ones, like Miss Angelou, who managed to both write it AND read it just right. Clearly, Miss Alexander was a few rhythms shy of the latter . But (for me) I'm still finding that the more I read the thing, the better it lands. Very odd.

If only they'd gotten the likes of a Patrick Stewart or a James Earl Jones to read it, I'm thinking the reception would have been miles different.

And ... hey ! I heard last night that those instrumentalists, the ones I liked, pulled an Ashlee Simpson! That music was pre-recorded and Yo-Yo and pals weren't really playing at all. That makes good sense, though, really. It was simply too cold for an instrument to sound right, in a reliable sense. And 'sounding right' was an enormous factor in a function such as that. I also hear that Aretha Franklin has reported wishing she had done the same ... crediting her less-than-choice vocal performance on the frigid temperatures. Which, in all fairness, may very well have been the case? Might help explain that hat, too - although the thing didn't look especially warm to me ...

Aha! I wondered how the musicians played so beautifully in that cold. I even made a comment that it was remarkable that they could move their fingers. Ooops.(edited to add) Apparently they did play live, it just wasn't being broadcast over the speakers. They played along with their recorded music and only a few people nearby actually heard them. I guess it was a good idea.

And it was just on the news that Franklin's hat was so popular that the designer has had hundreds of calls asking for the same hat.

Shades of the Beijing Olympics... would have preferred the hat in red!

Quote:

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James Earl Jones

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What an intuitive and dignified choice that would've been...a man with so much charisma he could say 'please pass the butter' and inspire everybody at the table.

Imagine what he could've done with a superior poem.

I am late weighing in on this, but the poem was not what I *expected* for such a seemingly momentous occasion. Even reading it, which I did several times, I find nothing in it that has that *got me in my heart and gut* reaction. That is what happens, to me anyway, when I read or hear something I can truly feel and identify with. It's an almost visceral place I go to. As has been mentioned, I felt I had 'gone to' an ameteur poetry reading in a coffee shop, complete with fingers snapping and head nodding, "Oh yeah, man, oh yeah."

Now, since I was not and never will be asked to produce or perform at a national level (they try to keep me away from the public library here when they have "The Reader's View", a local offering of various things) it really is just my opinion, but I haven't talked to anyone that has said much different.

Agree about James Earl Jones - beautiful voice. Patrick Stewart is a Brit and really would have been inappropriate - although nice to look at.

Bono and other very much *non-Americans* were the main singers in David Foster's song written for the occasion also. It really was a world audience and not just the U.S.

Elizabeth Alexander appears to be a quite accomplished poet, but her inauguration poem was not likely among her better works.

This is her bio from her Web site:

Elizabeth Alexander

Elizabeth Alexander is a poet, essayist, playwright, and teacher born in New York City and raised in Washington, DC. Alexander has degrees from Yale University and Boston University and completed her Ph.D. in English at the University of Pennsylvania. She has published five books of poems: The Venus Hottentot (1990), Body of Life (1996), Antebellum Dream Book (2001), American Sublime (2005), which was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and was one of the American Library Association’s “Notable Books of the Year;” and, most recently, her first young adult collection (co-authored with Marilyn Nelson), Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color (2008 Connecticut Book Award). Her two collections of essays are The Black Interior (2004) and Power and Possibility (2007), and her play, “Diva Studies,” was produced at the Yale School of Drama.

Professor Alexander is the first recipient of the Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellowship for work that “contributes to improving race relations in American society and furthers the broad social goals of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954.” She is the 2007 winner of the first Jackson Prize for Poetry, awarded by Poets and Writers. Other awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, the George Kent Award, given by Gwendolyn Brooks, a Guggenheim fellowship as well as the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at University of Chicago. She currently teaches in the Department African American Studies at Yale University.
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I found the inauguration poem quite lacking in artistic imagery and emotional power--not to mention cohesiveness. It seemed rambling and it's themes were disconnected from each other. It was not stirring or moving or memorable. Not a very good example of American literary art. It neither added to, or detracted from, a very stirring inauguration.

The musical quartet, on the other hand, was the most gorgeous, and fully appropriate, "classical" selection that I have ever heard at an inauguration. It showcased the talents of superb musicians and the arrangement highlighted very traditional and familiar American melodies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02Ao9jyq5Vk

This was an original arrangement, but not an entirely original composition by John Williams. The song, "Simple Gifts" was composed by Joseph Brackett in the 18th century as a Shaker hymn. The same melody appears in Aaron Copland's ballet Appalachian Spring. I kept thinking of Copland while listening to the piece.

A flap has arisen since the inauguration because the piece was not actually performed "live", and this was not known to the audience at the time.

Quote:

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Although it appeared that the piece was being performed live, it was in fact pantomimed while a recording made two days previously was fed to the television pool and speakers.Yo-Yo Ma told NPR's All Things Considered that the piano keys had been decoupled from the hammers, and the bows of the stringed instruments had been soaped to silence them. The performers stated that the cold weather could have affected the tuning and durability of the instruments, making a live performance too risky.

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Since the musicians were "syncing" their own pre-recorded playing, I have no problem with the very slight deception involved. In fact, I had wondered how they would be able to adequately play in the 25 degree weather.

The biggest gaff of the inauguration was certainly the flubbing of the presidential oath of office by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The oath was readministered the following day, in a private ceremony, just to dispel any possible doubts about it's validity. But, in the interim, between the first oath and the second, Obama had signed Executive Orders, which he chose not to resign after taking the oath a second time. Some felt, that if it was important enough to take a second oath, that those Orders should have beeen resigned as well.

I was very moved and inspired by President Obama's inaugural address. While it might not rank as one of the great inaugural addresses, it was clearly a statement of a new direction and new attitude on the part of our government, and it clearly repudiated policies of the Bush administration. I was left feeling hopeful and optimistic about our future and I had the definite sense that my country is in very good, and competent, hands.

It was hard not to be inspired by the sight of the millions of people gathered on the Washington Mall to witness the inauguration. People of all ages, sizes, skin colors, and backgrounds who had assembled to celebrate and witness a very historic event. We have never had an outpouring like that that reflected such unity and such jublilation to welcome a new President into office. Like so many others, I too shed tears of happiness that my country has come so far in shedding our horrible legacy of slavery and racial inequality. I truly never thought I would live to see this day, and I felt such joy during the inauguration because I had seen it happen.

One of the most wonderful reflections of the positive attitude enveloping people was that no arrests were made in Washington, D.C. on inauguration day--despite the millions who had gathered there. That, in itself is rather amazing.

These lines from Elizabeth Alexander's poem do reflect the historical significance of the day:

Quote:

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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...

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But no way could the poetry compete with the actual power of the event we were witnessing. This Inauguration Day was a very historic milestone for my country, and I loved and enjoyed every moment of it--even Aretha's hat.