Praise Song for the Day by Elizabeth Alexander: Brief Explication

I ran across Mark Doty's posting of the inaugural poem, "Praise Song for the Day" by Elizabeth Alexander and was inspired to comment:

In the poet's reading, I heard common sense, a down to earth presence in the words and voice, a simple (but not simplistic) note without pretension. I heard a call to love that echoed the essence of a particular place in history, a crossroads in which America stands, and I heard not religion, but a voice that reached past the noise of all our individual affiliations or leanings, the noise of difference and said, "We are here together."

Seeing her words on paper with its line breaks and stanzas gave me the opportunity to go even further into the experience of yesterday.

Below is a copy of the poem as it reads on msn.com:

Praise For The Day

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
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 considers 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 some one 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 thyself,
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 pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

Copyright © 2009 by Elizabeth Alexander. All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota. A chapbook edition of Praise Song for the Day will be published on February 6, 2009.

On Inauguration of President Barack Obama: One American Voice

The tears came during the final few minutes of his speech. Turning toward my husband, Wayne, I saw that he, too, was wiping away tears. I knew that this moment in history would have great meaning for us, but I did not anticipate the force with which it struck.

For those, like us, who were impressionable children when JFK took office (Wayne was eleven, I was seven) and then when JKF, MLK, and then RFK were assassinated, with LBJ in office, this moment is more than a hopeful one for the new generation (our children); it is also a profoundly healing one for those of us in-between.
During the inaugural speech, when Obama said these words:

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

That is when the tears came and they represented relief beyond hope, as well as grief. It has been with increasing sorrow that I watched our now former president compromise that very charter in the face of terrorism, taking, along with his cronies, a reactionary, misguided and hawkish stance – resembling a drunken John Wayne running the bad guys out of town. It was reminiscent of a bad western movie - maybe Bush aspired to Reagan’s model of leadership, but the timing was off and the script just didn’t read true.

At the same time, to give Bush Jr. some credit, he had the unfortunate task of leading our country during a time in which "the sins of our fathers" would come to light and thank God for that. For that reason, I am grateful for the bad times – for I believe they have served and will continue to serve to bring about change we can trust. With that change comes a new beginning and a new light to shine on our country, as both example and inspiration to the world – with that change comes a spirit that is both old and new, its roots in our founding fathers and mothers, the spirit of service and of unity in the face of great need.

There is no room or excuse for the greed and corruption in which our leaders have taken part and that we the people have been complicit in by very virtue of that charter that tells us we have the power to say no. We did not say no, or if and when we did, we did not say it loud enough.

It is with our new President Barack Obama and his leadership that we may now find the courage and the hope, as people, to offer an enthusiastic yes to change, change that represents no less than the radical spirit of that charter in which our country was founded, and a resounding and firm no to anything less.

Then The Tide Will Turn

Clyde and I take Jeremy's Trail again, down to our favorite perch on the bluff overlooking the ocean. The tide is coming in and the sun, which rose at 8:44 a.m. and will set today at 4:54 p.m., is making its short climb above the Grewingk Glacier and the mountains across the bay. It's a high tide coming in, almost 16 feet today.

Wayne d. Thompson,Photographer
www.journeysendphotography.com

We sit by a stubborn alder on the crumbling hillside and soak up rays on this clear November day. A neighbor's dog shows up, trotting down Jeremy's Trail like she owns it and Clyde runs to greet her. She's an old dog, a white fluffy breed, and I tell her to go home, as I know her owner won't be happy she's come this far. She does and Clyde throws a short whine of complaint at me, looking at me like I just took away a favorite toy.

I tell him he doesn't need no stinkin' dogs to play with - he's got me and we wrestle a little, which makes him very happy. We keep him on a short leash for a variety of reasons (one being that dogs in Alaska who chase moose get shot) and sometimes I feel badly for him that we don't have another dog. I guiltily explain to Clyde why he can't run off to play with the three new dogs that just moved into the house across from us. Clyde just looks at me and I admit to him that it isn't fair that he doesn't have a dog of his own to play with. I promise to campaign for another dog with the other member of our pack, my husband Wayne.

Clyde says, "Good luck!" and we settle into the damp leaves on our little clump of dirt beneath the sun and above the beach. I think about the election and the world celebrating Obama's win. The sense one gets when doing a puzzle, that satisfying click of a piece finding its place, seems to have taken place; I feel a sense of myself as an American more deeply than I can remember in a long time. It's as though a part of me has come home, a part of me I didn't know was missing.

Forty years have passed since 1968 and my fourteenth birthday: June 5th, the day Robert F. Kennedy was shot and killed. Forty years since Martin Luther King was assassinated. Forty years since the 1968 Civil Rights Act was signed into law. Forty years since I was a girl, facing my future.

I didn't know how much we Americans lost that year. I didn't know what lay ahead. I was a child on the brink of adulthood and I couldn't understand the world I lived in, how it would effect me to grow up in the aftermath of such loss, in the midst of the turmoil of the short years that followed. I couldn't know then how much history would play a part in the creation of my own life in the years ahead.

All around me I heard slogans like Make Love, Not War, Do Your Own Thing, Power to the People, What If They Gave A War and Nobody Came? Question Authority, Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out and even God Is Dead, an announcement attributed to the Beatles.

In 1969, I was fifteen and a man had just walked on the moon and he was an American. I was fifteen and 250,000 people had just marched on Washington to protest the Vietnam War. I was fifteen and 400,000 of my peers would soon attend a rock festival at Woodstock.

I was fifteen. I believed anything was possible. Before I would turn sixteen years old, four students would be shot dead and nine others wounded by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University. .

The blows just kept on coming. Like many young people, I was swept up in the tide, a wave of millions of young people (the Babyboomers), and I, like similar teenagers and young adults, did not understand that I could not live my life as though nothing mattered and not suffer the consequences. I did not understand that I was not independent of the context in which I lived. And neither, in retrospect, I think, did many of us. With so many others of my generation, I rejected not only the Establishment, but all authority.

I came of age during the sex, drugs, and rock and roll revolution. I was a believer. But the leaders who might have made a difference, the leaders who had both the vision necessary and the wisdom to counsel a generation had been killed in the streets. Who would lead us after that?

And as I went out, at the age of fifteen, to "find myself," as I proclaimed my civil rights and that of others, as I sought the freedom to dress, act, and live as an individual in a free society, a democracy, did I, could I, understand the greater "we" - that I was a part of? Did I understand that it was not about me, but about "We the people..."?

I don't think so.

But many did and do. They are the "invisibles", the worker bees, the unsung heroes and, without them, November 4, 2008 might have never come. They were there then and they are here today. They are teachers, social workers, firefighters, welders, mechanics, factory workers, nurses, doctors, preachers; they are soldiers, miners, carpenters, electricians, orderlies, secretaries, police officers - and they are the unemployed, the underemployed, the underclass, the middle class, but they are also the elite, professionals, the wealthy, and they are in poverty. They are every race and every creed. They are first generation, and beyond, immigrants. They are gay and straight. They are Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim.

They are voters. I am one of them.

Clyde licks my ear, reminds me that I am his person and he is getting thirsty. It is time to head home. The air has gotten crisper, the sun a little lower in the sky. The tide is beginning to turn.

Proud to Be American

"I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father's child has." Abraham Lincoln

Reporting From Small Town Alaska

No lines at the polls here in Homer, Alaska, just a steady flow of voters.
After voting, I headed toward downtown Homer to check my mail at the post office. I noticed a fairly good-size clump of people in the park right on the corner of Pioneer and Lake. They were waving signs for McCain/Palin and Paul Seaton, a local Republican representative, and there was even one sign for Ted Stevens.
No sign of any Obama supporters, although I knew there were plenty of them with our own Obama headquarters in town, so, on impulse, I headed for headquarters, housed in the old 'Try My Thai' restaurant building. There were two Obama campaign workers there (the rest were at another location getting out the vote) who were kind enough to give me an "Alaskans for Obama" sign.
I headed back to the corner of Pioneer and Lake and, taking the corner opposite the McCain/Palin supporters, I took my place and held up my sign. It felt good to exercise my civil rights in a spontaneous gesture that came from my heart.
There were quite a few children in the McCain/Palin crowd and I was glad to see them there. This is a day they will always remember, especially, I think, because I stood opposite them in support of their candidate's opponent.
There was a lot of traffic for a weekday in November in Homer. People going to vote during their lunch hour, I assume. There were lots of honks and even some engine gunning for the McCain/Palin crowd but, as some drivers noticed me, the one opposer, I began to get big smiles, nods, and thumbs up from some. I also got negative gestures, like thumbs down, shaking of heads, even some angry yells out windows of "Nobama!"
After about an hour, a woman showed up waving two Obama signs and proudly joined me saying, "I saw you out here all by yourself and here I am to help!"
Within the next hour, seven more people had joined us on the Obama side of the street. There was practically a traffic jam for a while - lots and lots of cars driving by and signaling their approval of either side.
Often, when I got a direct smile, thumbs up, wave and honk from an Obama supporter, our eyes met and what I read there was hope. Alaska is a Republican state and the electoral vote will go to McCain/Palin. The many Alaskans proud of their governor's nomination for vice-president makes the already Republican majority here even more fervently for McCain.
So it seemed to me that the Obama supporters driving by that cheered my small group on, were heartened to see us there exercising our civil rights on this crisp November day.
Eventually, the McCain/Palin supporters dwindled until there were none. The last of them, a woman with the group of children that I suspect were homeschoolers, stopped and shook my hand.
"I appreciate that you came out in support of your candidate." she told me. "This is good for my children to see."
"Thank you," I said. "Your children are never going to forget this, are they?"
We both smiled genuine smiles at each other and, as she drove off in her van with the kids yelling, "Don't be insane! Vote for McCain!" out the windows, a lone figure took their place across the street.
Whereas I had been alone facing the twenty or thirty Republican supporters several hours earlier, he now stood opposite me and my ragtag group of Obama sign holders with his own sign.
It read, "We're All One."
Yes. And it's time for Americans to finally figure that out.

Heil Obama?

I have received two emails in recent days warning that Barack Obama is the new Hitler. One was couched as a personal email from a survivor of Nazi Germany; the most recent quotes Fouad Ajami, with an emphasis on his Arab-American ethnicity, as a source for why Obama is to be feared.
These are indeed difficult and exciting times: difficult in part because information is irresponsibly dessiminated on the internet and elsewhere - responsible journalism seems to be a thing of the past - exciting because information can be dessiminated by anyone, from anywhere, all over the globe via the internet. Free speech and true democracy is accessible through the electronic gateway and, as long as the information continues to freely zoom along the internet highway, any Joe Blow (or should I say any Joe Plumber?) may join in the fray of public discourse, such as it be.
It is my choice to post a link via this article to Fauad Ajami's incendiary commentary because, in light of my enthusiastic endorsement of Obama, I to want provide readers with some of the misinformation that is circulating via the internet and email.
The only answer I have to a discourse like Ajami's is to point readers in the direction of Barack Obama's book, "The Audacity of Hope" as another source of information; in my mind, a better source of information for those who truly want to get to know the man, Barack Obama.
Fear appears to be the weapon of choice among Obama detractors. It is a corrosive, debilitating tool - it steals into the hearts of the most honest, sincere and authentic among us. It plants it's seeds of discord and moves on. Witnessing its clever disguises, my heart is heavy. My heart is sad. I am afraid for us all.

Barack Obama - The One and Only?

In both humility and hope, this is my endorsement of Barack Obama for President of the United States of America.
Because he speaks so well for himself, I will quote his words from the prologue of his book, The Audacity of Hope:

...I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if not all, of them. Which perhaps indicates a second, more intimate theme to this book - namely how I, or anybody in public office, can avoid the pitfalls of fame, the hunger to please, the fear of loss, and thereby retain that kernal of truth, that singular voice within each of us that reminds us of our deepest commitments..."

Obama then submits before the reading public a portrait of himself as a three-dimensional, whole person, a human being, a man, a father, lawyer, legislator, husband, and son. It is his awareness of who he is, what he comes from, and where he is headed, as well as his astoundingly clear vision of the issues facing us and how to lead us through them, that resonate for me. In the third chapter of the book, entitled "Our Constitution" he writes:

The Constitutions system of checks and balances, separation of powers, and federalism may often lead to groups with fixed interests angling and sparring for narrow advantage, but it doesn't have to. Such diffusion of power may also force groups to take other interests into account and, indeed, may even alter over time how those groups think and feel about their own interests.
The rejection of absolutism implicit in our constitutional structure may sometimes make our politics seem unprincipled. But for most of our history it has encouraged the very process of information gathering, analysis, and argument that allows us to make better, if not perfect, choices , not only about the means to our ends but also about the ends themselves. Whether we are for or against affirmative action, for or against prayer in schools, we must test out our ideals, vision, and values against the realities of a common life, so that over time they may be refined, discarded, or replaced by new ideals, sharper visions, deeper values. Indeed, it is that process, according to Madison, that brought about the Constitution itself, through a convention in which "no man felt himself obliged to retain his opinions any longer than he was satisfied of their propriety and truth, and was open to the force of argument."

After studying, listening, watching, and reading this election period, I think I am beginning to understand why Oprah Winfrey said of Obama, "He's the one" - not because she meant to imply some messianic status to Barack Obama but, to the contrary, because she believes, as I have come to believe, that he is a man capable of leading the USA through one of the most difficult and challenging periods in our history, that he is the one we need to lead us into the 21st Century. This because, more than anything else, he is a man of humility, courage, and moderation; one who can encourage us, the entire nation of you and me, to have a conversation that will result in what American democracy was founded to do - ensure the Union's survival and that of our individual and collective liberty. Barack Obama is the one in which my hope now lies, the one that I will vote for come November 4th because I do believe that he may lead us, our children, and our children's children, in the direction of a solid future true to this country's highest aspirations.

That is not to say, of course, that he is the only one but, rather, that Barack Obama is only one of many who have played a crucial part in the formation and preservation of this democracy, and he is also one of the few, among those who have led us, capable of accomplishing greatness as a man - but, more importantly - capable of accomplishing the great task of navigating our country successfully through the formidable challenges of the 21st century.

I must share - I finished reading "Audacity of Hope". I put the book down, turned to my dearest companion, my husband, and said, "He is the one."

Please vote November 4th.