[Vision2020] Yale Poet to Speak at Obama Inauguration

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today's (December 18, 2008) Spokesman Review -

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Yale poet part of inauguration
By Michael E. Ruane

WASHINGTON – After a hiatus of more than a decade, poetry is returning to 
the inauguration of the American president.

The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies announced 
Wednesday that Elizabeth Alexander, a prize-winning poet at Yale 
University, will read at the swearing-in next month of President-elect 
Barack Obama.

Elizabeth Alexander
http://www.elizabethalexander.net/Alexander_home.jpg
 
It is the first time that “poetry’s old-fashioned praise,” as Robert Frost 
called it, will be featured at the ceremony since 1997.

Alexander, 45, would be only the fourth poet to read at a swearing-in 
after Frost, who read at John F. Kennedy’s in 1961, Maya Angelou, who read 
at Bill Clinton’s in 1993, and Miller Williams, who read in Clinton’s 
second inaugural in 1997, according to government officials.

Alexander, a professor of African-American studies, was a Pulitzer Prize 
finalist in 2005 and winner of the Jackson Poetry Prize last year.

She said she was overjoyed at the inaugural honor.

“I am obviously profoundly honored and thrilled,” she said. “Not only to 
have a chance to have some small part of this extraordinary moment in 
American history.  …  This incoming president of ours has shown in every 
act that words matter, that words carry meaning, that words carry power, 
that words are the medium with which we communicate across difference, and 
that words have tremendous possibilities and those possibilities are not 
empty.”

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"Emancipation"
By Elizabeth Alexander

Corncob constellation, 
oyster shell, drawstring pouch, dry bones. 

Gris gris in the rafters. 
Hoodoo in the sleeping nook. 
Mojo in Linda Brent's crawlspace. 
 
Nineteenth century corncob cosmogram 
set on the dirt floor, beneath the slant roof, 
left intact the afternoon 
that someone came and told those slaves 
 
"We're free."

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
 
"For a lapse Lutheran born-again Buddhist pan-Humanist Universalist 
Unitarian Wiccan Agnostic like myself there's really no reason ever to go 
to work."

- Roy Zimmerman


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