Thanks for the links to the Post, Julie and Sam.

It looks like good politics to me. Don't know how much Obama had to do with it, in that a Congressional committee apparently made the choice, but it sure looks like his handiwork.

I think that the choice, when it occurs, has to be political. Clinton chose Maya Angelou, whom we have mocked as a poet. JFK chose a prime time New England Poet. It appear to work that way: Obama's neighbor who apparently listened to MLK's cadences when she was one year old. It's a good story.

Couple years ago I had to write a poem for a wedding to be attended by many D.C. and internationally connected doers and it was hard work. I don't envy Elizabeth the task, but it's a great honor and I hope she writes a splendid piece.

I'm mellowing.

Bob

Does this mean the election's over?

It makes the football season look short.

PQ

"African Leave-Taking Disorder" is one I like, though to be honest it could be sleeker, sharper. It's on her home page under "Poems."

Here is a video of her reading when whe won the Jackson award.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tURYL...eature=related


and another reading
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lC9V...eature=related

Oh gosh. Is it alright to say, after complimenting her on her clear diction, that she is dull?

I feel no pulse.

"But there is little doubt, given the intense global interest in President-elect Barack Obama, that Ms. Alexander’s verse will be broadcast to more people at one time than any poem ever composed."

From piece in Washington Post
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/25/bo...=pol&emc=polb1

My son told me that in his Honors English class today (8th grade), they studied EA's inaugural poem.

I asked him if they had studied any other poems this year.

Nope. Just that one.

I asked him what his teacher thought of the poem.

She thought it utterly Brilliant.

I imagine this going on in classrooms all across the nation.

All eyes and ears spanning the world were in a position to receive a poem, and instead were given:

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."


-


What an enormous missed opportunity for the art.

But we're supposed to be thrilled that poetry was represented at all..

I don't think so. Better no poetry than bad poetry.

Shame on yer, Barack.