Poets, Society: Dead or Alive

I am still trying to figure out what to think about Elizabeth Alexander's poem, "Praise Song for the Day," the one she read at Barak Obama's inauguration. At the time of the reading, I was underwhelmed. I realized that she followed one of the great orators of our time-- our new President. Yet, I wanted her to rise to the occasion, as Maya Angelou had done for Bill Clinton, and more, as Robert Frost had done for JFK. So I was disappointed.

I took some consolation in reading afterward, that I was not alone. Little of her imagery had stuck in the minds of many-- and what are poets, any way, if not image-stickers? I felt for her. How often do poets get so grand a stage, so great an opportunity to make the case for poetry? When Alexander missed the mark, the rest of us might too. Yet now, more than ever, we need creative writing. On the coming-down side of our national shopaholic binge, we could all lift ourselves up by the bootstraps of our language-- if we simply were inspired to do so.

Two events have occurred to inspire me. One is to read that a radio DJ in New Jersey has been about inviting "remixes" of Alexander's poem. He seems to realize it needed some redeeming, too. Kenny G is his name, and we can listen to him on www.wfmu.org. He's also posted 51 MP3 remixes on WFMU's blog! One of them simply took all of the words in the poem and put them in alphabetical order-- which turned out to be a poem all its own.

I don't know what Alexander thinks of this, but I find it to be in the spirit of poetry itself. Robert Frost used to say that a poem was never "finished, only abandoned"-- a view I've come to take about my life itself. Maybe Alexander's offering was meant to be remixed or reworked or otherwise taken in by us and redone, like the abandoned given a new home.

The other thing that happened was an editorial in the local paper, that begins with this quote from JFK: "Power corrupts, but poety cleanses." Ah... I'm breathing easier already! Then the story is told of what really happened on JFK's blustery inaugual day: Frost abandoned the poem he was going to read, the one he had written for the occasion, and instead recited from memory, "The Gift Outright." Who knew? "The Gift Outright" was shorter...

Anyway, here are the closing lines of the poem Frost wrote, "Dedication-- For John F. Kennedy, His Inauguration":

"Some poor fool has been saying in his heart
Glory is out of date in life and art.
Our venture in revolution and outlawry
Has justified itself in freedom's story
Right down to now in glory upon glory.
Come fresh from an election like the last,
The greatest vote a people ever cast,
So close yet sure to be abided by,
It is no miracle our mood is high.
Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs
Better than all the stalemate and's and if's.
There was a book of profile tales declaring
For the embodied politicians daring
To break with followers when in the wrong,
A healthy independence of the throng.
A democratic form of right divine
To rule first answerable to high design.
There is a call to life a little stearner,
And braver for the earner, learner, yearner.
Less criticism of the field and court
And more preoccupation with the sport.
It makes the prophet in us all presage
The glory of a next Augustan age
Of a power leading from its strength and pride,
Of young ambition eager to be tried,
Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
Of which this noonday's the beginning hour."

Frost got much right in that poem-- a fair forecast of Camelot, and our national mood in the early '60's. But the line I like the most is the next to last: "a golden age of poetry and power...". When we approach our personal lives and our national life together with that order in mind (poetry, then power), we'll not only get through this dismal and discouraging time, we'll find new ground for pride and new reasons to rejoice in triumph.