Elizabeth Alexander to recite her poem for Inauguration

[Skip Zilla]

Elizabeth Alexander has been asked to recite an original poem she's written for the U.S. Presidential Inauguration on January 20, 2009. I'm about half way through one of my own making, which is difficult for me because writing an occasional poem is always too intentional a construction. If I finish the other half of it, I'll post it. Here's a poem about poetry she's written; she read it tonight on PBS's News Hour.

Ars Poetica #100: I Believe

Poetry, I tell my students,
is idiosyncratic. Poetry

is where we are ourselves,
(though Sterling Brown said

“Every ‘I’ is a dramatic ‘I’”)
digging in the clam flats

for the shell that snaps,
emptying the proverbial pocketbook.

Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,

overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way

to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)

is not all love, love, love,
and I’m sorry the dog died.

Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,

and are we not of interest to each other?