a new firth of breedom, HOPEfully a still, cool one. firth w/ wide berth
KS
2009/1/21 Max Richards <[log in to unmask]>
> Quoting sharon brogan <[log in to unmask]>:
>
>
> > Here is a transcript of Alexander's poem, from the NYT:
> >
> > ***************
> >
> > Praise song for the day.
> etc... and here is a critique by one Erica Wagner:
>
> From Times Online
> January 20, 2009
> Critique of Elizabeth Alexander's presidential poem
>
> Elizabeth Alexander had a tough act to follow
> Erica Wagner
>
> If you are a little-known poet – and perhaps, let's be completely honest,
> maybe
> rightly so - being told you're going to have to follow a speech by
> President
> Barack Obama is a very, very, very bad gig to pull.
>
> Praise Song for the Day was unmemorable. How do I know that for sure? Why,
> because I can't remember it. Two minutes after it was spoken I couldn't
> remember
> it. Our columnist, David Baddiel, wondered whether he couldn't spot the
> Secret
> Service agents hastily removing the bullet-proof screens as she spoke; oh,
> I
> suppose that's going a little far. But only just.
>
> If you listened to President Obama's inaugural address, you would have been
> reminded of the remarkable ability of language to both be a part of what we
> are
> and yet also somehow to raise us above ourselves, to remind us - as he
> wished to
> remind us - that we are capable of greater things. He spoke of what the
> ancestors of today's Americans had done: "For us, they packed up their few
> worldly possessions and travelled across oceans in search of a new life.
> For us,
> they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the
> whip and
> plowed the hard earth. For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord
> and
> Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn."
>
> Mr Obama understands the music of cadence and beauty that simple repetition
> can
> bring; Professor Alexander, alas, sounded merely repetitious, or at the
> very
> least, confused: "All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
> one of
> our ancestors on our tongues." That tongue seems like a pretty crowded
> place to
> me. Ouch.
>
> Alexander is clearly an admirable woman; it's not hard to see why President
> Obama would admire what she stands for: as she tells us on her website, she
> is
> the first recipient of the Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellowship for work that
> "contributes to improving race relations in American society and furthers
> the
> broad social goals of the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education
> decision of 1954." Which is terrific. But this poem, alas, was not
> terrific. It
> was pedestrian and dull. It attempted to convey, in language much less
> skilled,
> some of the message which the President so ably conveyed in his inaugural
> address, his own language drawing on that of scripture and of past great
> Presidents and orators.
>
> "Ordinary" speech – the rhythms and phrases on which Professor Alexander
> drew –
> can indeed, rightly used, be poetic. I was reminded of that possibility
> when
> listening to John Williams' setting of the Shaker song, Simple Gifts, as
> played
> by Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma just a few moments before: "'Tis a gift to
> be
> simple, 'tis a gift to be free, 'tis a gift to come down where we ought to
> be..." That is indeed simple, and that is indeed poetry.
>
> Never mind. Who cares? Not me. I just got to type the words "President
> Barack
> Obama" for the very first time; and listen to the new President's words
> take us,
> we may all profoundly hope, once again towards – as someone once said – a
> new
> birth of freedom.
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>
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