I thought the poem itself was mediocre – not horrible, but not great.
Like many of you, I also found the recitation odd. As I was listening, it reminded me of something, but I couldn’t remember what. Later, I figured it out. I recently rewatch all three seasons of Deadwood, and Alexander’s recitation reminded me of Andy Cramed, after he came back to town as a preacher. His preaching style was similar, with the oddly placed pauses and inflection – nothing like the more rythmic Reverend Smith, who has more pleasing to listen to, even if no always coherent.
I hesitated to post my feelings on the poem, for a couple reasons.
First of all, I am one of those people that enjoy poetry without being very knowledgable about poetry. I don’t know enough about meter and such to be a good critic. Furthermore, I write poetry (which I know is very bad poetry) and I wouldn’t want anyone to ever tell me the truth to my face (that my poetry is shit). So I wanted to extend some leniency here.
But, it bothered me that the poem used some cheap tricks…certain phrases that I feel are a weak cop out in poetry. It lowers the bar of the art when a poem is trying to sound all ‘poetic’ without really being poetry. But, poetry, like any art is not black and white. Some will like it and some won’t. There was at least one moment of the poem, where I felt a mood was being created.
The monstrosity that was the poem made me wonder why it has to be a new poem at the inauguration. I think almost all occasional poetry is going to suck because the poet doesn’t have a lot of time and they’re forcing the theme. Couldn’t we have someone recite some Walt Whitman or Langston Hughes or something that means something to the President Elect?
Oh yeah, it’s hugely subjective. I write free verse and as such I didn’t have a problem with the fact that it was free verse, but a lot of people prefer something with a recognizable meter and rhyme scheme, so there’s that, to start with. And rhythmically, I think it was weak. You can do a lot with rhythm and tension even without a formal meter, so I wasn’t too impressed by that. But I thought that, given the rhetorical flourishes of all of the other speakers, there was a place for the kitchen-sink ordinariness of the poem.
I also think it’s totally okay to think it was a shit poem. I think it’s great that there’s still a place for poetry in the public arena, and I think it’s even better if there’s discourse about it.
But for some reason she does not follow through. Like JeffB said it doesn’t hit you as great, though it’s not horrible – more like, there’s got to be a poem, so here’s one
Every time she said “praise song” I wanted to stab someone. It just never made sense to my ear, these two words paired together. The whole poem was like one run-on sentence waiting to be completed and never getting there.
Seriously, how was this woman picked? I would have thought that poetry was such a niche job these days, that anyone would who made even HALF a living from it would have to be really good. Guess not.
I’m a big fan of poetry – even modern free verse – and I didn’t like it. While parts of it rose toward mediocrity, large sections of it were tastelessly generic. It’s as if she has a specific style, but intentionally went out of her way to genericize that style, so that it would have broader appeal – and way overdid it.
IMHO the “listing” was trite, because she didn’t give specific or vivid images:
“Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.”
It’s like a high-schooler wrote that.
Also, parts looked like she had just dug out the thesaurus:
“On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp…”
Her delivery was much worse…not only were the pauses long, as if to suggest momentous words would follow (when plain lists of generic things were what actually followed) but she seemed, frankly, uninterested or uninvolved. It’s like it was an assignment she had to plow through. If the poet can’t be arsed, the audience won’t be.
I told my wife “That woman just set poetry back another decade.”
I didn’t like today’s poem but I also didn’t like Maya Angelou’s poem from Bill Clinton’s first inauguration. In particular, I disliked that a couple of paragraphs (stanzas?) were basically lists. I’m surprised that some of you liked it.
I think it drew a compelling picture, touched all, was profound and sparse. It had a rhythm conveyed, and texturous words. I believe it was good. Postmodern, unoffending, populous.