"Bards at the Inaugural Gates" [by David Yezzi]

from the Wall Street Journal, Friday, January 9, 2009:
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When Barack Obama tapped the poet Elizabeth Alexander, a longtime friend, to read at his inauguration on Jan. 20, he selected a message as well as a medium. Born in Harlem in 1962 and raised in Washington, Ms. Alexander teaches in the African-American studies department at Yale and writes extensively about that academic trifecta -- race, class and gender.

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Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy's inauguration.

Ms. Alexander comes from a political and academic family and is a champion of politically engaged poetry. Her father, Clifford L. Alexander Jr., advised Lyndon B. Johnson on civil rights and later served as secretary of the Army under Jimmy Carter. Her younger brother, Mark, a law professor at Seton Hall, recently transitioned from Mr. Obama's campaign staff to his transition team.

So readily do the views expressed in Ms. Alexander's award-winning writing -- the need for social progress and transformation -- harmonize with Mr. Obama's victory that the message almost precedes the poem. Right now, though, the pressure is on her to deliver the goods. Any poet would find the task more than a little daunting: setting the tone for Mr. Obama's nascent presidency while finding a voice for the American people at this distinctive (and turbulent) time in our history. Ms. Alexander's credentials suggest that she is up to the task, but the proof is in the poetry.
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