Inauguration Poem

I can't get over this poem written and recited by Elizabeth Alexander. You can find the full text of it here.

Dr. Fred Sanders has a good summary of it among his general inauguration commentary:

A slow start, with language too everyday. But it picks up. “What if the mightiest word is love” is too abstract. “Praise song for walking forward into the light.”

Everything about this poem is abstract. You have to hear the poem to get the full effect. The poetry is recited in an almost monotone cadance, with every word supposed to stand on its own without the author.

And is there really an author behind "song"? If we are to praise song are we praising an idea or what or who exactly?

What if the mightiest word is love...

As long as love remains a word, it is empty, dead, and dying. You really can't have poetry without a poet, but it's as though Elizabeth Alexander is really trying to remove herself entirely, trying to give us a "perspectiveless" perspective -something which she has to say although it is not 'her own'.

The coldness of the newspapers with their language is in here too. The reporters are always claiming they are withholding 'their opinion' and just giving us 'the facts', but their empty and robotic claims about morality and justice are opinions that refuse to be opinions and opinions none the less.

Hope ... change ... accountability ...

Talk is cheap. Words are cheap. A person who does not waste his or her own breath is a find. I wish we could hear from more poets, politicans, and reporters who openly said what they believe instead of disguising it in shame.

Barack Obama, I hope you are ready and willing to set aside the popular view -the mob mentality and all its illusions- to lead candidly and from your heart. That may not be change, but I can believe in it.