Inaugural Poem

At first blush, that was pretty lame.

I'll need to read it before I pass final judgement, but it did nothing for me.

I am with you. Was the woman who read it the poet? My friend said they should have had someone else read it....

The Mutt said:

At first blush, that was pretty lame.

I'll need to read it before I pass final judgement, but it did nothing for me.

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annaswirls said:

I am with you. Was the woman who read it the poet? My friend said they should have had someone else read it....

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That was her. Normally I would say that there is no one better to read a poem than the author, but some folks got it and some folks don't.

Hard to follow in Ms. Angelou's footsteps

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbi...modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1

another inaugural poem

The Gift Outright

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,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

-- Robert Frost

Of History and Hope

1997 inaugural poem by Miller Williams

We have memorized 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.

The rich taste of it is on our tongues.

But where are we going to be, and why, and who?

The disenfranchised dead want to know.

We mean to be the people we meant to be,

to keep on going where we meant to go.

But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how

except in the minds of those who will call it Now?

The children. The children. And how does our garden grow?

With waving hands -- oh, rarely in a row --

and flowering faces. And brambles, that we can no longer allow.

Who were many people coming together

cannot become one people falling apart.

Who dreamed for every child an even chance

cannot let luck alone turn doorknobs or not.

Whose law was never so much of the hand as the head

cannot let chaos make its way to the heart.

Who have seen learning struggle from teacher to child

cannot let ignorance spread itself like rot.

We know what we have done and what we have said,

and how we have grown, degree by slow degree,

believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become --

just and compassionate, equal, able, and free.

All this in the hands of children, eyes already set

on a land we never can visit -- it isn't there yet --

but looking through their eyes, we can see

what our long gift to them may come to be.

If we can truly remember, they will not forget.

© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company

The Mutt said:

That was her. Normally I would say that there is no one better to read a poem than the author, but some folks got it and some folks don't.

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I read some of her other stuff, which seemed more powerful, maybe it is just a matter of delivery, but there was not a single line that moved me. And it was too long Poor President Obama's hands were getting frostbite.

Maybe this should be a challenge, YOU write the inaugural poem

I was googling Elizabeth Alexander before she even finished reading. Maybe it's wasn't a grand poetic moment, but just imagine reading your poetry during the inauguration. It's cool that poetry was a little part of it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/us/politics/20text-poem.html?ref=books

The following is a transcript of the inaugural poem recited by Elizabeth Alexander, as provided by CQ transcriptions.

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.

WickedEve said:

I was googling Elizabeth Alexander before she even finished reading. Maybe it's wasn't a grand poetic moment, but just imagine reading your poetry during the inauguration. It's cool that poetry was a little part of it.

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No, I cannot imagine it. Too horrific. Yes, it is very cool that poetry was a little part of it. The poem read more like prose than poetry, though.

The best poem read today was by the minister, quoting "Lift Every Voice and Sing"

I really really wish they had found a place to sing this song, to think of the whole crowd singing it together... We used to sing this at every assembly in the first school where I taught. I cried almost every time....


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElgJfAoVm8I&feature=related

Words: James W. John*son, 1899.

Music: John R. John*son

Lift every voice and sing, till earth and Heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet,
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered;
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.

annaswirls said:

I read some of her other stuff, which seemed more powerful, maybe it is just a matter of delivery, but there was not a single line that moved me. And it was too long Poor President Obama's hands were getting frostbite.

Maybe this should be a challenge, YOU write the inaugural poem

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I'm in.

Earlier today, totally by accident, I ended up at Elizabeth Alexander's page on Poets.org. There are a few samples of her writing there.

Here's a link to the inaugural speech. The transcript is at CNN in case you have any problems linking.

I'm reading it but the delivery was so poor I can't get it out of my head.

Reminds me of my policy not to see movie versions of books I love...invariably they eff it up and then that visual colors the experience returning to the text!