The Inaugural Poem

Your Head Trucker will admit to liking a good poem - or pome, as we say here in Texas. So I thought I'd reproduce for y'all here the one that Elizabeth Alexander delivered at the Inauguration. She seems like a nice person, and there's nothing wrong with the poem when you read it on the page:

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each other’s eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere, with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum, with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

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

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed, words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of some one and then others, who said I need to see what’s on the other side.

I know there’s something better down the road. We need to find a place where we are safe. We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

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

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself, others by first do no harm or take no more than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national, love that casts a widening pool of light, love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, any thing can be made, any sentence begun. On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp, praise song for walking forward in that light.

Nice thoughts, nice poem. Problem is, it simply doesn't sound so great when read aloud; not the kind of thing that works well when declaimed upon a great national occasion.

I agree with the title of the Guardian's review of it: "Elizabeth Alexander's praise poem was way too prosy."

I hear tell that prose poems are all the rage these days; but as with modern art and modern music, so too with modern poetry: it's all well and good to innovate, but when you get too far from the oh-so-last-century traditional forms that people expect, too far into the ordinary (or the bizarre, in some cases), then you can't blame people for not being terribly impressed.

Still, I believe I understand what Ms. Alexander was trying to say here, and I applaud her sentiments. I don't know that I could have done any better if the onus were put on me. I've put it on my to-do list to go read some of her other poems when I get a chance.

Mama always said, when slipping some suspicious vegetable onto my plate, At least try three bites; then if you don't like it, you don't have to eat any more of it.