Praise Song: The Morning After
a poet on the inaugural poem
2009-01-21
By Brian Gilmore

It can be said that Elizabeth Alexander’s inaugural poem, “Praise Song for the Day,” is the country’s first official “post racial” poem. This is not because Alexander wrote a poem that lacked an overt racial component or that we are somehow “post-racial” (I have no idea personally); it is mostly because her salutation to the day a black man became President did not succumb to the obvious racial promotional ads looped repeatedly since November 4, 2008 that show the United States patting itself on the back for electing Barack Obama President.

While much of the media and the political establishment have bombarded the nation and the world with this “aren’t we just a great country” sentiment, Alexander deferred and took refuge in higher and much more important literary space. Alexander thus delivers a poem that is not cliché but a real poem about real people (though no one in particular) and not elusive ideals.

“Praise Song for the Day” is a poem about the ordinary and the incredible. Where it is racial it is subtle (as race and racism is now becoming); where it is historical, it is expansive. The poem’s underlying quest is universality:

“Say it plain, that many have died for this day,” Alexander writes, “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.”

This is, of course, Americana; most of us can find ourselves somewhere in those words.

Early on, the poem acts as a quiet metaphor for the coming of Barack Obama.  “All about us is noise,” Alexander writes seemingly as a set-up. This is followed by several scenarios about the daily struggle: “Someone is stitching a hem,” “A farmer considers the changing sky,” “A teacher says ‘Take out your pencils. Begin.’” and the best one of all - “Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.”

I took critical license with this section and heard it all as a representation of the rise of Barack Obama. It works for me but I doubt Alexander meant them to be taken in such an exacting manner. Obama, however, can be the stitcher, the farmer, the teacher, and the person trying to make music in the lives of so many people now at this trying time. There is trouble in America and someone with unique skills and a certain wherewithal has to fix things.

The poem ends by again focusing upon a universal theme: love. One section of the poem delivers a loaded question:

“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.” These lines are courageous though they are spoken and heard quietly.
Alexander’s “widening pool of light” is all about enormous possibilities when she links the phrase with her closing note: “praise song for walking in that light.”
 
“Praise Song for the Day” is a poem that could take on a life of its own as times passes. Will it remembered like Gingberg’s “Howl,” Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” Baraka’s controversial, “Someone Blew Up America?” or something akin to Shange’s performance symphony, “For Colored Girls…” Only history knows.

Brian Gilmore is a public interest lawyer, poet, writer and columnist with the Progressive Media Project in Washington, D.C.