Article

Elizabeth Alexander to deliver poem at Barack Obama’s inauguration

January 12, 2009

When Barack Obama takes office on 20 January, Yale professor Elizabeth Alexander will not be a bystander. The inaugural committee asked her to write and deliver a poem at the inauguration ceremony. Only three other poets have read at presidential inaugurations: Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy’s, Maya Angelou at Bill Clinton’s LAW ’73 first, and Miller Williams at his second. Alexander, a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist, is the youngest poet to be bestowed with this honour.

While Alexander did not start writing the poem until after she got the phone call from the inaugural committee on 17 December, she said the language for the poem started forming as she followed Obama’s campaign. “The whole campaign and election have put me in this zone of thought,” she said.

Source: http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/26987, 12 January 2009