Local to Read Poem for Obama

As a faculty member of the University of Chicago in the early 90s, poet Elizabeth Alexander worked closely with President-elect Barack Obama, whom she regarded as unusually brilliant.

“He was someone who was very warm, committed, who was unusually keen and charismatic and an unusually curious human being,” she said.

Now Alexander has been chosen to read an “occasional poem” at Obama’s inauguration next week.

“There is no event as momentous as this in [my] past,” Alexander said. “This really is sui generis, it’s own thing.”

A former Radcliffe fellow and Cambridge resident, Alexander has composed an original work for an event that represents the end of an arduous political journey and a milestone in America’s racial history.

“I recognize the excellence in this extraordinary African American elected to the highest office of the land,” she said. “The day comes with a lot of hopes and feelings and sweat and the blood of millions of people.”

Given the expectations on her shoulders, Alexander said that the best she can do is to stay calm and collected.

“I’m just trying to stay very quiet and focused until we come to the day itself,” she said. “The occasion is literally unimaginable.”

As current Radcliffe fellow and National Poet of Wales Gwyneth Lewis said, “Poems don’t come if you put pressure on yourself, and this has to be the most pressurized commission that anybody could imagine...she must feel exposed as well as invigorated.”

Alexander, incoming chair of the African American Studies Department at Yale, has published five books of poems, one of which was a 2006 Pulitzer prize finalist.

Exposed to politics at a young age—her father was a civil rights adviser to President Lyndon B. Johnson—Alexander has used her prowess with words to write about race, class, and gender.

“I find poets are very interesting people who look at the world from their own particular points of view and are always surprising with language,” she said.

“That’s what I like about poets: their independence, their free-spiritedness.”

Alexander highlighted Obama’s similar ability to wrangle with words, saying that his book “Dreams of My Father,” which she has taught in a class at Yale, was a “real” book and extraordinary American narrative.

“That care with words really is a reflection of his understanding for the importance of communicating clearly and precisely to get the job done.”

For those students and writers searching for poetic direction, she said that reading is of the utmost importance.

“Never forget that in reading, you’re seeing the things you want to make, made beautifully,” she said. “[Also remember] that being a poet is not something you choose because you want a career, it’s something you choose because you have to and you’re called to make art.”

—Staff writer Betsy L. Mead can be reached at emead@fas.harvard.edu
—Staff writer Peter F. Zhu can be reached at pzhu@fas.harvard.edu.