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Wednesday, January 21, 2009

FOR the Inauguration of Barack Obama: David Hopes



(David Hopes, UNC-A)


Here is the poem I needed to hear yesterday. One of our best NC poets wrote it for the Inaugural Celebration in Asheville last night. It is large-spirited, its perspective broad, its language soaring. David is also a fabulous prose writer. I heartily recommend his BIRDSONGS OF THE MEZAZOIC. What is the place of the poet in our country today, beginning with the Inaugural platform yesterday? I believe we have some clues in the poems and comments we have heard, as well as in Obama's speech. What are your thoughts on this?



FOR THE INAUGURATION OF BARACK OBAMA



I see you, Waldo Emerson, looking down from the white steps
of the white church in the green town square, your shadow
longer than the steeple’s. I see you with your calipers out
to measure the progress of the Republic.
I see you dragging your stepladder to the center
where all the political speeches are made. I see you
climb to the top step, arms outspread like wings,
waiting for somebody to take you up, waiting for somebody
who, with words like a flight of new stairs, with hand
beckoning at open door, will take us out and over.

I see you Abraham Lincoln, stirring on your great stone seat
in the nation’s capital. I see you stare through the Potomac fogs
and the smog of automobiles wondering if the flags that fell
into the dust when you fell will be lifted up by anybody, ever.
People who stand before you day after day
have seen the great head tilt, the eyes turn the slightest turn
to the north and west. You are listening.
Thunder rolled once from the plains of Illinois, and I think
you hear it again, the first report, the gathering of voices
under a troubled cloud fringed with glancing brightness.

I see you, Walt Whitman, eyeing the men in their white shirts
coming out of offices, wondering when, if ever, to announce
the long-awaited wedding between politics and poetry,
the white knot to unite the tenderness and the will of nations.
I know who would lift his beard to the rising moon
to sing the prothalamium. I know who would dance naked
where the real Potomac meets the Potomac of the mind,
with its clear stream watering all the nations. Souls you saw
for sale and sweating in the noon sun have taken the harp
and the scepter in their hands. I hear you dancing on the bent grass.

So I say to you now, you old solemnities with your gray eyes
and your worries and the bit of deafness from the continual bombardment,
you martyrs from the sad gone past, warriors
and nurses and mostly-ignored, poor-dying poets,
breathe deep. Put grandma’s casserole under the checkered cloth.
Take the cider and the moonshine from their alcoves under stone.
Tie the ribbon on you haven’t worn these twenty years.
Come down to the water to drink.
The tables are spread and the fiddlers are tuned,
Come down to the dancing place to dance.

Barack Obama is President now. I’m saying this in a quaint old way
so my grandmother gliding from the ghost of the Shannon
to the ghost of the French Broad, seamless and mystical, will understand.
I’m saying this all down-home and elementary so Sherry from the third grade
and Jesse who fished the ponds with me and red John from the Projects,
who were children when I knew them, and may be children still,
come running unafraid. It is a new day. Have you seen such
gold on the flowers of the riverbank? Come down to the water to drink.
Justice is spreading white cloths on the tables,
and Generosity is heaping them high, and finding room for more.

And I am invoking allegorical characters so that Locke and Paine
and Rousseau and Aristotle under their crowns of laurel
may feel at home, wandering in from their Elysiums, the invitations in their
hands written in bold American, come home, come home.
The President of a Land Made New in an Age Made Just invites you.
Your names were mentioned but you never sat down at the table.
Sit now, Walt gossiping at your side and Abraham with his long arms
passing the platter. Come down to the water to drink.
The feast is prepared and no one has been turned away.
I bell thee, I summon thee, I sing thee home.

David Hopes

10 comments:

Vicki Lane said...

Absolutely perfect! Come down to the water -- I love it.

Kathryn Stripling Byer said...

Vicki, I love these long lines, the sonorous effects, and he is speaking of the great old dead "white men," as my friend doris davenport called them and which turned her off, but he's speaking as if telling them, "look now." Look at where we are now, as he remembers his friends from the projects, etc.

DeadMule said...

RE: "What are your thoughts on this?"

Hi Kathryn,

My thoughts.

I was very disappointed on Tuesday when I heard that you had criticized Elizabeth Alexander. She was asked to write and deliver a poem to 2 million people. Hard enough to write a poem for a given occasion. You know that. But I, for one, don't even know what 2 million people look like. I think the shock itself might throw me off a bit. Maybe you do this every day. I don't think so.

I think poets gain nothing by criticizing other poets. Not on an occasion like this. I, too, have an inaugural poem. But President Obama doesn't know who I am. And he probably doesn't know who David Hopes is either. Life is too short to criticize others.

When I heard you criticized for making the critical remarks about Alexander, I said that didn't seem like you. All I've seen from you is graciousness and good poems. Still, I am disappointed.

Helen Losse
http://helenl.wordpress.com/

My inaugural poem "recorded In Time"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgjqzJgUUXo

Kathryn Stripling Byer said...

Helen, I am sorry you took offense in my asking questions about the performance and the poem. Yes, I was terribly disappointed. even upset, on Tuesday by this presentation and said so on redroom.com, which by the way, I am no longer doing, because I think this kind of blogging enourages the sort of exchange I got into with Marilyn Kallet. (Am I right, this is where you are coming from?) If I am criticized for this, I'll just have to live with it, of course. American poetry had a huge chance for an audience on Tuesday, to enthrall and engage. You know I've been trying to spread the message of poetry's power for nearly 4 years here.
And oh, to see it squandered--I know I'm not alone in feeling this way. And knowing that we have African-American poets who could have sung our hearts away with their poems!
While we are asking questions-- here is another question we might think about--we have a U.S. Poet Laureate. This would have been the time to call upon her services. Otherwise, we never even hear much from her.
Or him.
Maybe this is a discussion worth having. But I am truly sorry that you are disappointed in me for being disappointed by the Inaugural poem's presentation.
Thank you for giving us the link to your poem.

DeadMule said...

Kathryn,

I did see you on Red Room, but I have no connections to that site. (I'd only been there a time or two before.) I heard from Collin Kelley that you were among the poets criticizing Elizabeth Alexander. (there were several.) I told him then that you were a kind and gracious person and that I was surprised (which is how I still feel) and that I would check it out. I contacted you here because you asked for comments. Otherwise, I would have e-mailed you and said this privately. I have no problem with you, and if you wish to delete these comments, I understand.

I agree with what you said about your efforts in NC and the opportunity at the inauguration. Yes, the US Poet Laureate would have been the logical choice. But what then do we do with Aretha Franklin? There is no Laureate of Song. Traditionally, the president has chosen participants in the ceremony.

I certainly didn't mean to start anything with you and apologize if that's how I came across. You have been nothing other than gracious toward me. But I do feel sorry for Elizabeth Alexander. On a day that should have been one of her crowning moments, other poets took her down. I think that makes all of us poets look petty. And we are not.

All the best,
Helen

Kathryn Stripling Byer said...

Helen, I have no problem at all with your saying how you feel. I so wish this had indeed been a crowning moment for Ms.Alexander and for all of us who have worked to make poetry a vital part of our culture. I suppose it wrenched me to see people walking away in the middle of it, and I know how I feel when that happens. I want the walking away to stop and for people to listen--but both poets and listeners have to work togethr on that. Goodness, I would never delete your message! Maybe I've just gotten too caught up in the "public poet" persona of the laureateship and so get on my soapbox more than I should. I do really think that the Inaugural poem has good things going that are not allowed to rise yet to full potential. I don't know why.I think/hope she will sit with the poem for awhile and let it speak to her in ways that can tell her what to do. Writing such poems are very demanding in all sorts of ways, and I've lain in bed at night waiting for images and lines to come for the State Library Assoc. or the laureate "coronation" where I'm to deliver my laureate address---After Fred Chappell's poem, which was lovely, of course. The irony is that now I feel I want to write more of what it was like growing up white in the south, as if somehow the dam has burst. Can you explain this? The experience is so deep. We have so much to bring to each other.

DeadMule said...

Thank you, Kathyrn, You have proven you are the woman I thought you were.
Love, Helen
http://helenl.wordpress.com/

DeadMule said...

Okay. I'm confused. Is this your personal site? If so, where's your laureate site?

The Mule would be honored to be on your site. BTW, send poems any time you want; you're family.

Kathryn Stripling Byer said...

Helen, the laureate site is ncpoetlaureate.blogspot; the name is My Laureate's Lasso.

Kathryn Stripling Byer said...

An interesting side note to my blog conversation with Helen, I received a very gracious email from the man who administers Red Room, urging me to come back , that the exchange after my post re Alexander was one of the most interesting and lively they'd had lately and raised some good issues, that this was what redroom.com was all about. I thanked him, but I don't know how soon, or if, I'll venture back. (I'd posted a farewell, saying I didn't want to get drawn into any more exchanges like the one with M. Kallet),