The Inaugural Poem

You've heard of never speaking ill of the dead? Well, I choose never to speak ill of poets. I love poetry, and it's in too much trouble these days to crack on anyone trying keep it alive.

So with that preface, I'll say that I really liked the poem Elizabeth Alexander read for the recent inauguration. I advocate for plainer meaning in poetry, and this poem works nicely. Don't get me wrong, I love modernist poetry, which tends to be obscure -- think T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens. But the historical moment for modernism has passed. I think what we need now is a plainer poetry that is easier for people to "get." Less obscurity and randomness. Isn't there enough of that in the broader culture these days? Whereas Eliot and Stevens to me seem like artistic responses to a culture of conformity.

So I really liked Alexander's poem. Read the whole thing here. I liked the lines:

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

I really liked, "Take out your pencils. Begin." Doesn't that sum up all the potential and excitement of learning? To me it does.

And I also really liked:

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Now just so you know I haven't gone completely Pollyanna, I also liked this critical examination of the poem from the UK's The Guardian, which accuses the poem of being too prosy. ("Prosy"?) It is critical, but it's also serious textual analysis. It's serious criticism worthy of a serious poem, so to speak. And if you go over to Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog, you'll find a wonderful font of comments, both pro and con, about the poem. Ta-Nehisi's blog is mostly politics and culture, but he posts a poem every Friday morning and then opens the comments in the afternoon. It's a lot of fun.