Inaugural Poem
So...if you're going to provide a poem for the inauguration of a new President renowned for his own flights of rhetoric, you'd better bring it.
Umm...Elizabeth Alexander? Not so much.
It wasn't just that her poem was so unmusical ("the figuring it out at kitchen tables," "with no need to preempt grievance") or syntactically klutzy (Do we really need the final preposition in "edifices...they work inside of"?) or metaphorically confused (Are we crossing that "dirt road" to "see what's on the other side" or moving "down" it? And are we perhaps being invited to consider ourselves chickens?). But, to me, it lacked the very essential character that defines poetry: A transformational character to its observations of the mundane, a non-rational analysis that transcends surface description. The poet should at least help us feel the forest; this poem only described the trees with a quick gloss of Hallmark sentimentality ("What if the mightiest word was love?" What, indeed, that a thousand Tin Pan Alley lyricists haven't already more memorably explored?).
And then there was Ms. Alexander's delivery...
::sigh::
Umm...Elizabeth Alexander? Not so much.
It wasn't just that her poem was so unmusical ("the figuring it out at kitchen tables," "with no need to preempt grievance") or syntactically klutzy (Do we really need the final preposition in "edifices...they work inside of"?) or metaphorically confused (Are we crossing that "dirt road" to "see what's on the other side" or moving "down" it? And are we perhaps being invited to consider ourselves chickens?). But, to me, it lacked the very essential character that defines poetry: A transformational character to its observations of the mundane, a non-rational analysis that transcends surface description. The poet should at least help us feel the forest; this poem only described the trees with a quick gloss of Hallmark sentimentality ("What if the mightiest word was love?" What, indeed, that a thousand Tin Pan Alley lyricists haven't already more memorably explored?).
And then there was Ms. Alexander's delivery...
::sigh::