Professor Elizabeth Alexander AP Photo by Michael Marsland
It is no longer news that the US president-elect Barack Obama is a poet. Poet Elizabeth Alexander was selected by Obama to compose and read a poem at his inauguration on January 20, 2009. Alexander is a Yale Professor of African American Studies and English Literature. According to Yale University Office of Public Affairs, she 'is the author of four books of poems, “The Venus Hottentot” (1990), “Body of Life” (1996), “Antebellum Dream Book” (2001) and “American Sublime,” which was one of three finalists for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. “American Sublime” was selected as one of the 25 Notable Books of 2005 by the American Library Association, which described it as “Sparkling with humanity and unexpected grace.'
In 2007, Alexander was the first recipient of the $50,000 Jackson Prize for Poetry. Her other honors and prizes include the inaugural Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellowship for work contributing "to improving race relations in American society,” a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Chicago, the George Kent Award, a Guggenheim fellowship and a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Alexander and Obama became friends when they were on the faculty at the University of Chicago together in the 1990s.' Blues is a poem by Elizabeth Alexander.
I am lazy, the laziest
girl in the world. I sleep during
the day when I want to, 'til
my face is creased and swollen,
'til my lips are dry and hot. I
eat as I please: cookies and milk
after lunch, butter and sour cream
on my baked potato, foods that
slothful people eat, that turn
yellow and opaque beneath the skin.
Sometimes come dinnertime Sunday
I am still in my nightgown, the one
with the lace trim listing because
I have not mended it. Many days
I do not exercise, only
consider it, then rub my curdy
belly and lie down. Even
my poems are lazy. I use
syllabics instead of iambs,
prefer slant to the gong of full rhyme,
write briefly while others go
for pages. And yesterday,
for example, I did not work at all!
I got in my car and I drove
to factory outlet stores, purchased
stockings and panties and socks
with my father's money.
To think, in childhood I missed only
one day of school per year. I went
to ballet class four days a week
at four-forty-five and on
Saturdays, beginning always
with plie, ending with curtsy.
To think, I knew only industry,
the industry of my race
and of immigrants, the radio
tuned always to the station
that said, Line up your summer
job months in advance. Work hard
and do not shame your family,
who worked hard to give you what you have.
There is no sin but sloth. Burn
to a wick and keep moving.
I avoided sleep for years,
up at night replaying
evening news stories about
nearby jailbreaks, fat people
who ate fried chicken and woke up
dead. In sleep I am looking
for poems in the shape of open
V's of birds flying in formation,
or open arms saying, I forgive you, all.
POET BARACK OBAMA
US President-elect Barack Obama
I saw an old forgotten man
On an old, forgotten road
staggering and numb
pulls out forgotten dignity from under his flaking coat,
And walks a straight line along the crooked world.
Under water grottos, caverns
Filled with apes
That eat figs.
Stepping on the figs
That the apes
Eat, they crunch.
The apes howl, bare
Their fangs, dance,
Tumble in the
Rushing water,
Musty, wet pelts
Glistening in the blue.
*May be typo
**Poems by Barack Obama
Postscript…
NO 'NAKED BUTTOCKS' FOR OBAMA
'Booty chair' courtesy All4humor
The president-elect Barack Obama was 'criticized' for selecting Elizabeth Alexander as his inaugural poet. Alexander’s title poem on Sarah Baartman in her first poetry collection The Venus Hottentot (1990) was used against her. Saartjie "Sarah" Baartman (1789 – 29 December 1815) aka Hottentot Venus was a slave. She was 'nakedly displayed' after her death in a museum for 159 years until 1974. Former President Nelson Mandela told France to return her remains to South Africa in 1994. In 2002 her remains were released and buried in South Africa. It may be necessary to see a YouTube documentary on Sarah Baartman. Nevertheless, people are not going to listen to a poem on ‘naked buttocks’ on January 20, 2009. I doubt if there will be an X-rated Inauguration as 'exaggerated'… *Poet and filmmaker M. K. Asante, Jr. wrote Ghetto Booty: The Hottentot Remix for Baartman in 2005. Other poets including Edith Sitwell and Diana Ferrus also wrote poems for Baartman.
