shame on u Elizabeth Alexander i want the briefcase

Elizabeth, you spoke in a godawful drone,

a quite patronizing, over-enunciated tone. you bored! you disappointed how many million people? and this, perhaps the coolest opportunity for performing poetry live that anyone in the history of this country has ever had. (ever!)

i cld not listen to you, Elizabeth. i laughed with my husband about things having to do with work. mundane things, Elizabeth. i recall i asked him if i shld throw a load in, of laundry, while you droned on, vague and unsewn trite image, by vague and unsewn trite image,

saying nothing, Elizabeth. you said nothing, as if to no one special. perhaps you can write good poetry. perhaps Ted Turner wrote this poem for you, and you, against your best ethics chose to read it, since he is such a powerful man, and you hesitate to make waves.

maybe Rupert Murdoch wrote this poem for you, and threatened to take away your tenure if you chose to read a good poem, one that you wrote with the whole country in mind. i bet you would have preferred to read one of your best poems, a poem which would have spoken to people, to cause them to pause, to breathe deep. to smile or sigh and shake their heads saying yes! yes! aloud, to one another.

maybe you grew nervous about how you would come off. or maybe, and i truly hope this is the case, maybe you left the great poem you wrote for the great occasion at home, in your briefcase. and of course, we would all understand. i mean, in the traffic like that it would have been impossible to go and retrieve that good poem you wrote to wow the people.

or perhaps you are a whitebread plain jane simpleminded fearful person, who does not feel what a poet feels, and this is why, on this greatest occasion you did not deliver a poem with feeling, containing even the most basic elements of what people in their basic receipt feel inside to be a good poem. i hope Elizabeth, that poem waiting in the briefcase will be heard and repeated ten thousand times by true admirers.

in fact, i will buy that whole briefcase from you. i will pay whatever you ask, up to 1000 dollars, since i do have 1000 dollars to trifle with, if it does mean being blown down after Obama's grand lifting,,, we poets in America, Elizabeth want to be blown down! immediately!

send the case or its contents to Green Panda Press 3174 Berkshire Road
Cleveland Heights OH 44118

((also, if you are not Elizabeth and want to Blow America, you can send yr own poems to the same address. i am interested to print poems by poets who know how to say great things regarding this great occasion))

Inaugural Poem 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.

Elizabeth Alexander to read at inauguration

This just in

from the poetry and politics department. Elizabeth Alexander, a poet, essayist, playwright, and teacher, has been selected to read a poem at Barack Obama's inauguration. Read a story about the selection here. I'm hoping that this choice is better than the selection of Rick Warren to give the invocation. While I'm not familiar with Alexander, 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. She has received many grants and honors, most recently 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,” and the 2007 Jackson Prize for Poetry, awarded by Poets and Writers. She is a professor at Yale University, and for the academic year 2007-2008 she is a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

I enjoyed the poem On the Pulse of the Morning, that Maya Angelou read at Bill Clinton's first inauguration. Maybe Alexander can top it. Question: Do you think it's any coincidence that only democrats select a poet to read at presidential inaugurations?