Don’t Expect Too Much From Elizabeth Alexander
Posted by ben on 19 Jan 2009 at 10:42 am | Tagged as: poetry, politics, public art
Jim Fisher, discussing the challenges Elizabeth Alexander faces in writing an occasional poem for the inauguration, explains why this kind of poetry doesn’t usually work:
Why is poetry so different from other disciplines? Music and the plastic arts (painting, sculpture, architecture) are demonstrably receptive to commissions, with great works created on command, as it were. With sculptures and buildings, we only have to walk a few downtown blocks in most major cities to see lasting examples of both, pro and con.
The problem for poets is not the commission — Milton’s “Lycidas” and Marvell’s “Upon Appleton House” are both immortal poetry commissions — but the occasion, which fixes the poem with a public event. Once the function has passed, the poem loses the immediacy of its audience, and with it the power to summon meaning and emotion over time.
So let’s dispense with this idea that poets can produce lasting poems for public events. It’s unfair to the audience, discomposes the poet, and probably confirms the low opinion of poetry some listeners already hold.
When we read poetry to ourselves, the occasion of a great poem is an internal event, organizing the perceptions and determining the material. When that occasion is a point in time and place, the work is more likely to be stuck there when published: partial, responsible, contemporary, rarely timeless.
[hat tip]
:| Play the songs–no theater–just background
from Time Q&A:
“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.”
more at http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1872643,00.html
incidentally, alexander was my sister’s favorite professor during her tenure at the university of chicago.
A Cornell-led team of astronomers has observed dust forming around a dying star in a nearby galaxy, giving a glimpse into the early universe and enlivening a debate about the origins of all cosmic dust.
To have that affirmed by the President-elect has really been an exciting thing for poets.
This is one of those cases of projecting too much onto Obama. He’s certainly not the first president to have a poet read at the inaugural, and this isn’t some sort of watershed moment for poetry. It’s just nice, I suppose, to have a president who reinforces America’s good traditions, rather than its bad ones.
perhaps you could read it as a projection, and yes, he is not the first to have a poet read at the inaugural… he’s the fourth. out of 44. one can hardly call that a tradition :)
addendum: fourth out of 44 presidents – who held 56 inaugurals – so 1/14th of all inaugurals have featured a reading by a poet.
Haha, ok. Obama is the poet’s president.
stop patronizing me, ben. we all know that warren gamaliel harding was the poet’s president.