by Wendell Berry
[text and audio]
Selected Poems
Selected Poems
On the day before the President Obama's inauguration in 2009, Elizabeth Alexander recited this poem on the mall for a soundcheck. And hundreds of people stopped, listened, and clapped.
The last poem of a longer work, Ms. Alexander puts this together with her poem "Autumn Passage" as an example of having those experiences of giving birth and the privilege of sitting with one near the end of life.
In this poem, Ms. Alexander says that the late Lucille Clifton informed her fluid approach to "a very deep kind of ancestral understanding... that moves us into the future." Includes the audio of the poet reading her work.
An excerpt of the poem Ms. Alexander read at the inauguration of President Barack Obama.
