12 January 2009
Obamapoetics
Poet Elizabeth Alexander discusses Obama’s interest in poetry
The speakers are interviewer Curtis Fox and poet Elizabeth Alexander. Associated audio file (2:25) excerpted and used with permission of the Poetry Foundation. The full interview (9:02), produced by the Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Off the Shelf November 25, 2008, can be heard on the Poetry Foundation’s Web site.
(begin excerpt)
INTERVIEWER: This is Poetry Off the Shelf, from the Poetry Foundation, November 25th, 2008. I’m Curtis Fox. This week, poets in the Age of Obama.
In general, American poets have never been close to power. In fact, they have been some of the most outspoken critics of our politics and our presidents. But suspicion about politics and presidents has taken a holiday with the election of Barack Obama. And that’s why I have Elizabeth Alexander on the phone. Elizabeth Alexander is a poet, essayist and playwright who is also a professor at Yale....
...
ELIZABETH ALEXANDER: I think perhaps what I hear is a lot of poets taking heart that not only is this someone who takes care with his language, not only is this someone who is evidently a thinker — certainly we haven’t had a president who’s been a professor, that is to say, someone who spends at least a part of his professional life thinking about complicated ideas and trying to make them comprehensible and working them through with students — but also that this is someone who appears to care about poetry itself.
As many people have noted, he was photographed three days after the election carrying Derek Walcott’s —
INTERVIEWER: I saw that; that’s —
ALEXANDER: — collected poems. I mean, the “in box” went wild. (Laughter.) Poets just absolutely couldn’t believe that — that here, with that gesture, he was saying that a few days after being elected president ... to find the time for contemplation that poetry provides, to read one of the great poets of world poetry, Derek Walcott — that is to say, not to have a strictly nationalist view of where important art is found — is utterly extraordinary. We heard one his refrains — “we are the ones we have been waiting for” — that’s a line from June Jordan’s “Poem for South African Women.”
INTERVIEWER: Is that right? I didn’t know that.
ALEXANDER: Yes, it is. Yes, it is.
OBAMA: Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. (Applause.) We are the ones we’ve been waiting for....
(end excerpt)
