Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Praise Song For The Day

Did I miss something yesterday?

I opened the paper this morning and see that -- while stuck in my office yesterday -- I missed seeing a black hand on the Lincoln Bible.

(Photo of Lincoln's first Inauguration)

I missed the swearing in of Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States. I missed one of the most inspiring and challenging inauguration speeches ever given. I missed the images of countless faces weeping with joy. And, not to trivialize any of that, I also missed a short poem written and shared by Elizabeth Alexander, a professor at Yale University. A poem commissioned by Barack Obama.


"Obama hasn't commissioned a poem so much as he's commissioned someone to make the moment mean something bigger than ceremony or political poses," said Todd Boss, a St. Paul poet. "To poets, and to those who draw meaning from poetry, the only real shock is that this kind of thing doesn't happen more often."

How often? A quick internet search reveals that Alexander is only the fourth poet to read at an inauguration, following Robert Frost in 1961, Maya Angelou in 1993 and Miller Williams in 1997.

(Frost was so blinded by the sunlight that he scrapped the poem he had written for the occasion and recited one he knew from memory)


It got me thinking, Why do we even write poetry?



What compels someone (including many of you Knights of MSA) to arrange their thoughts in words (poems and song lyrics) that have form and rhythm? And why does this shift from sentences to stanzas heighten a moment or an emotion?

From an article By KIM ODE, Star Tribune (Minnesota) Edited for Length:

“People have been making poetry for thousands of years -- the word poem is from the Greek for "a thing made" -- long before words were put to stone, much less paper. We tend to think of a poem as art, but its genesis in fact was as a device, as a way to tell a story using cadences and rhymes that made it easier to remember, and so to be passed along.”

Obama himself had a few poems published in the student literary journal of Occidental College in 1981. "He's got the attitude of a poet, which is a large part of his success," Minneapolis poet Tim Nolan said. "When he's giving a speech, he's very particular about his choice of words."

And again arises a comparison with Abraham Lincoln, who also had some poems published. Granted, Nolan said, "they weren't very good. But when you think of the Gettysburg Address ..."

"Even though people are afraid of poetry in some funny way, as something beyond them, it's also the most democratic of forms," said St. Paul poet Phebe Hanson. “Most of us have tried to write a poem, she said, whether for a tribute… or for working through a trying moment.”

But it's no less important -- and perhaps more so -- to read poetry. We all need to do our part, for as Walt Whitman once observed: "To have great poetry, there must be great audiences, too." (end)

Elizabeth Alexander was asked: How did it feel to be asked by Obama to play such an important role in the Inauguration? Alexander: “Overwhelming, humbling, joyful. So many of my poet friends and I were hoping that he would decide to have a poem at the Inaugural, because we felt that it would be a signal of his own evident value of the possibilities of language. What we have is his understanding that the arts do have a place in day-to-day life, that poetry can still us — that is, let us pause for a moment and, as we contemplate that careful, careful language, hopefully see situations anew, from a different angle. That's so much of what art and poetry offer. I think that he is showing that moments of pause and contemplation in the midst of grand occasion and everyday life are necessary. To have that affirmed by the President-elect has really been an exciting thing for poets.”

Yes, I missed something yesterday. A short poem written by a poet not afraid to express herself. Here it is:



ALEXANDER:

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer consider the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, Words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; Words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

Jan 20, 2009 12:34 ET .EOF

Simple words creating complex images. Words to consider; reconsider.

Does it make you want to read more poetry? Does it make you want to write? As the poet suggest, “Take out your pencils. Begin!”

Note: Keep scrolling down to read Sir Hook's excellent history lesson "Resolute."

Sir Bowie “A poet and don’t realize it” of Greenbriar

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

as the recipient of many of Sir Bowie's poems, songs, and writings through the years, I know the inclusion of a poet in yesterday's events was noteworthy...we have many marvelous writers and musicians in our midst...
it all helps make our sometimes rocky world a nicer place to live

and writing it down, sounding it out, finding just the right word/sound helps us gather the random thoughts in our brains into something to help make sense of chaos

Lady Suzanne of Greenbriar

who is partial to the challenges of haiku

dkWells said...

Thank you Sir Bowie for preserving that fine poem for us on our blog!

I decided to take the day off and sat down at the TV all day, and with my computer tuned into CNN.COM and took in this historic day from beginning to end. How often do we get to live history?

The last time I remember doing something like this was watching JFK's funeral on TV when I was 6. I sat down at the piano and wrote my first song about the funeral. I don't remember the melody, but all I kept singing was, "President Kennedy's dead." I felt the need to express myself. I felt that yesterday as I took the time to read and listen to (those that were recorded on audio) all the Presidential Inaugural addresses. Once again, I find myself inspired to be an American and a citizen of the World! It's a good and almost forgotten feeling.

Ryan came in from ROTC training in his uniform and we watched the swearing in ceremony together. He said it simply and with feeling, as only a soldier can do, there's my new commander in chief! His best friend is stationed at Arlington in the Honor Guard and was guarding the Whitehouse that day, so he got to see and hear history from a personal level!

I saw the poem being read live, the expression of appreciation on Obama's face during the reading, and also how it slipped over a few heads of those who didn't quite get it, but it was a grand moment all the same!

It inspired me to write:

The colors of mankind
Collide on common ground
The Stars share the Stripes
Of those who built this place

A Great Society perched on a hill
Finds its Voice
No longer slaves to defeat
We all Dare to Dream Again

Sir Hook the Humbled Historian of Warrick

Anonymous said...

"Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables."

:)) Good to see my sign trade got a namecheck... damn right...there's some figuring out goes on kitchen tables,.... work benches, sat up in bed, and even on occasions laid on the floor like a school kid.

Most weeks I attend the crowded bohemian, Catweazle Club at the East Oxford Social Club in Cowley,
(www.catweazleclub.org ) a free for all, open mic night for poets , singers, performers etc... it's ramshackle and magical and candles on the table and that sort of stuff..
I have often been asked to perform my pearly poems, and many many moons ago i did... but wasn't over keen to do it again.

Some of the poets there, really can make their poems come alive, many tho are nerveous and faltering, how heavy become their words, much heavier than air.

For me poems are at their best a solitary, hidden, private moment, often in silence, coming across one suddenly in a book or magazine and reading it with the voice of your own mind.

An audible voice, (unless you have the magnificent bass phrasing of Barack, who could read a To Do list and make you cry,....jeremy Irons is another one ) somehow adds a clunkyness that distracts me.

Now i've just read Alexander's lovely poem, put up by the Bowster...and i enjoyed it sooo much more, my mind patting each word as it passed over them like a breeze.

I've often wanted to put some pieces on the net...but a poet friend of mine had grown wary of it... as he found some of his stuff swiped by a cut and paster...and published and sold under another name before he could blink.. Not that i'm that good... but it made me even more protective.

I have , somewhere way down on my bucket list a desire to self, hand print a small book of my poems...just to have on a shelf ...or even leave places...on trains or buses

so people maybe, could then have
one of those solitary, hidden, private moments, reading them when i'm not around.

Sir Dayvd ( "...but her splendours are as dreams awake / vapid in the arc of days / As we within this sunset rest/ Our timeless friendship on its rays." ) of Oxfordshire

Sir Bowie of Greenbriar (a.k.a. David A. Kuhn) said...

Interesting.
The site where I lifted the transcript is also a poets' forum.
There seems to be a lot of criticism about the delivery and even the poem itself.

Sad!

How wonderful it is to be part of an "organization" that is "free to create without judgment."

I love that Sir Hook was inspired to write and Lady Suzanne writing haikus. I love Sir Dayvd's idea of handwriting his book and leaving it on a bus. And I'm thankful for the opportunity to write on this blog from time to time -- to cast a widening pool of light (knowledge, humor, beer, poetry...)

Sir Bowie of Greenbriar