President Obama: First of all let me
thank Madeleine for the wonderful introduction.
Madeleine will be going to
Princeton next year.
(applause)
So her and
Michelle were exchanging how
special they were backstage.
And you know, President is a
cool title but former teen
poet that is a pretty good
title as well.
And I'm proud to be both.
I have to say my poems are
not as good as
yours, Madeleine.
But I was going to recite
some poetry but Michelle
said no.
She said don't do that.
Anyway, April is national
poetry month.
So Michelle and I figured
what better way to celebrate
than with some of America's
brilliant young poets.
We've invited poetry fans of
all ages to join us as well.
And we have one of America's
most gifted and accomplished
poets, my dear friend,
Elizabeth Alexander who is
going to share some work
with us so I'm not going to
speak long.
Poetry matters.
Poetry like all art gives
shape and texture and depth
of meaning to our lives.
It helps us know the world,
it help us understand
ourselves, it helps us
understand others,
their struggles, their joys,
the ways that they see the
world it helps us connect.
In the beginning there was
the word.
I think it's fair to say
that if we didn't have
poetry that this would be a
pretty barren world.
In fact, it's not clear that
we would survive
without poetry.
As Elizabeth once wrote, "we
encounter each other in
words, spiny or smooth,
whispered or declaimed,
words to consider,
reconsider."
That's the power of poetry.
Sometimes it's only after
reading a poem or writing a
poem that we understand
something that we already
went through, that we felt,
that we experienced.
That's why we often reach
for poetry in big moments.
When we fall in love, or
lose somebody close to us or
leave behind one stage of
life and enter into another.
A good poem can make hard
times easier to survive and
make good times a lot
sweeter.
But poetry does not just
matter to us as individuals,
it matters to us as a
people.
The greatness of a country
is not just the size of its
military or the size of its
economy or how much
territory it controls, it's
also measured by the
richness of its culture.
And America is America in
part because of our poets
and our artists and our
musicians.
All those who share their
ideas and their stories and
help make us the vibrant and
passionate and beautiful
country that we are today.
It's not every nation that
produces poets like
Elizabeth or like Madeleine.
There are parts of the world
where poets are censored or
they are silenced.
That's not how we do it
here.
That's one of the many
reasons why we're such a
special place.
If you want to understand
America then you better read
some Walt Whitman.
If you want to understand
America you need to know
Langston Hughes.
Otherwise you're missing
something.
Fundamental, about who we
are.
And now for the very special
poet we have here today,
I have met Elizabeth when we
were professors together at
the University of Chicago.
She and Michelle and I have
been friends ever since so
when we were planning my
first inauguration we
decided we better have a
poet.
We thought we should have a
poet that we know and
we love.
And she penned this
extraordinary poem called
"Praise song for the day."
Y'all should read it.
On a day full of
unforgettable moments
hearing Elizabeth read that
poem was one of my
favorite moments.
She's just written an
amazing book that
technically is not a poem,
but is full of poetry.
I could not be prouder of
her.
So congratulations to all
the young poets,
I look forward to reading
your work or hearing
your work.
But right now I want to
introduce Ms.
Elizabeth Alexander.
(applause)
Elizabeth
Alexander: Thank you.
Thank you.
So I'm very, very happy to
be here today.
And first of all, first of
all and largest of all,
I want to thank the
President and the First Lady
for inviting me here to work
with these extraordinary
young writers.
I loved our time together.
I wish that we could've had
more.
You did amazing work and you
have got to keep going
with it.
You're right there and you
have got to keep going.
It was beautiful.
And to think of that as a
way to celebrate national
poetry month, the sharing of
new work with young people
and people who have been
writing for a long time,
in this special, special,
special space is something
for which I'm extremely
grateful.
National poetry month began
19 years ago.
The Academy of American
poets got it started.
This celebration today is
emblematic of the many,
many, many ways that the
Obama's have shown us their
steadfast commitment to and
belief in the necessity of
the arts in our daily lives.
To show us who we are, to
help us dream,
to help us imagine beyond
our immediate surroundings
as well as find the beauty
in the day to day.
So you grace us and you
inspire us with everything
you do.
Thank you so much.
So once again, to the
students who I worked with
today, our workshop was
dedicated to the topic of
writing on loss, that is
something that no matter our
age, no matter our
circumstance,
loss of some kind or another
is something we know about
and something we will
continue to know about and
something that exists hand
in hand with love and
feeling and joy.
We know that we've lost
something,
we know that it matters to
us because we loved it in
the first place.
The depth of loss is
measured in part by the
degree to which we love.
So I once again want to
applaud the young people for
being courageous and being
so focused today.
I also just want to say
briefly that my own students
from my freshman seminar on
African American poetry at
Yale came from New Haven,
Connecticut.
They are right here.
(applause)
So I think I like
the traveling with your own
posse concept, it's a good
one.
And their work and their
devotion to African American
poetry, their use of Claudia
Rankins term,
traveling as a family, we
are traveling as a family
and their devotion to poetry
and their devotion to
each other.
Finally I have to say my
family is here,
my brother and sister in
law, my mother and father,
and my two beloved sons,
Solo and Simon.
(applause)
I'm glad that
Madeleine read an
Ars Poetica.
She read from Czeslaw
Milosz.
Those are poems as many of
you know about the art of
writing poetry.
And so this is ours Ars
Poetica 100, "I believe."
Poetry I tell my students is
idiosyncratic.
Poetry is where we are
ourselves though Sterling
Brown said, "Every eye is a
dramatic eye,
digging in the clam flats
for the shell that snaps,
emptying the proverbial
pocket book."
Poetry is what you find in
the dirt in the corner over
here on the bus, God in the
details,
the only way to get from
here to there.
Poetry and now my voice is
rising, is not all love,
love, love and I'm sorry
your dog died.
Poetry here I hear myself
loudest,
poetry is the human voice.
And are we not of interest
to each other.
In the President's words,
about the light of the world
that I'm going to turn to
now to read from,
it's not a book of poetry
but it's a book with poetry
in it.
It's a poet's book, it's not
a book that I ever imagined
that I would write but it is
a memoir that only a poet
could have written.
It came from the same place
that poetry comes from,
word by word, sound by
sound,
musical note by musical note
in very condensed musical
short sections.
It was a book that I wrote
after the unexpected passing
of my husband and the
process of finding the road
forward, word by word, with
human beings as my
companions, with love as my
companion,
and with art as my
companion.
So I'm going to read a few
sections from,
"The Light of the World."
The story begins in 1962
when two women in cotton
lawn maternity shifts
approached the end of their
pregnancies, one in Asmara,
Eritrea one in Harlem, USA.
"The low hanging moon of
impending childbirth governs
their days.
The ones we may come to love
have been born by the time
we start longing for them.
And so my beloved and I came
on to this earth in March
and in May of 1962, halfway
around the world from
each other.
Then in 1996 we came
together one family who
arrived in America as
Eritrea and refugees who had
never been slaves.
The other who landed 100 and
200 and 300 years ago.
Slaves and free from Europe,
Africa and the Caribbean.
Every beautiful day we
lived,
every single beautiful day.
He who believed in the
lottery,
he who did not leave a large
carbon footprint.
He who never met a child he
did not enchant.
He who loved to wear the
color pink.
He whose children made him
laugh until he cried.
He who never told a lie.
He who majored in physics
who knew the laws of
the universe.
He who wanted to win the
lottery for me.
We loved Jimmy Scott's
version of the David burns
song,"Heaven."
"Heaven is a place where
nothing ever happens."
These days I picture heaven
populated by the umber
angels painted in abundance.
But that seems too fanciful.
I never truly believed in
heaven and cannot
manufacture it.
Little Jimmy Scott's
plaintiveness seems right
when he sings, "Nothing ever
happens."
How better to describe the
infinite solitude of the
afterlife.
"When this kiss is over it
will start again,
it will not be any
different,
it will be exactly the
same," he sings.
Each kiss is fixed, it is
the same long kiss but it
will never change.
That's the comfort and that
is the heart break.
One night at bedtime Simon
asks if I want to come with
him to visit (inaudible) in
heaven.
Yes I say.
And lie down on his bed.
"First you close your eyes,"
he said,
"And ride the clear glass
elevator up we go."
"What do you see?"
I asked.
"God is sitting at the
gates," he answers.
"What does God look like?"
I asked.
"Like God," he says.
Now we go where daddy is.
"He has two rooms," Simon
says,
one with a single bed and
his books and another where
he paints.
The painting room is vast,
he can look out any window
he wants and paint, that
room has four views,
our backyard, the dock he
painted in Maine, Asmara,
and New Mexico.
"New Mexico," I ask?
Yes, Simon says, the volcano
crater with the magic grass.
"Yes," I say, the
(inaudible) where we saw the
gophers and jack rabbits and
the elk running across and
daddy called it the VELT.
Yes, do you see it?
And I do.
The light is perfect for
painting.
His bed in heaven is a
single bed.
"Okay, it's time to go now,"
Simon says.
So down we go.
"You can come with me any
time," he says.
Thank you, my darling.
"I don't think you can find
it by yourself yet, "
he says.
But one day you will.
I come out of my first
Pilates class exhilarated,
blood flowing, stretched and
tall.
It is the first time in ages
I lose myself and forget.
My tears come fast and sting
just after I think I cannot
wait to get to the phone to
call (inaudible) and
tell him.
The poet surprises me how
true and contemporary he
feels in the "Book of
Hours,
" poems which he is wrote as
received spiritual messages
or prayers.
He wrote," Let everything
happen to you beauty and
sorrow, just keep going.
No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they
call life.
You will know it by its
seriousness.
Give me your hand.
For Wilka, God is the hand
the reader is exhorted to
take.
(inaudible) is not my God
neither do I know who God is
but I find this force in art
in poems in the community I
have made.
When we met those many years
ago I let everything happen
to me and it was beauty.
Along the road more beauty
and fear and struggle and
work and learning and joy.
I could not have kept
(inaudible) death from
happening to us it happened.
It is a part of who we are,
it is our beauty and it is
our terror.
We must be gleaners from
what life has set before
for us.
If no feeling is final,
there is more for me
to feel.
And so, the story ends, or
pauses,
as we know it is all one
long story.
My sons and I have moved to
New York City.
Today we look out our window
at the Hudson River and wait
for another hurricane as the
sky turns lavender and
orange, (inaudible) colors.
When the rain is most
dramatic we feel him close.
The boys grow taller than
everyone around him them and
become young men.
Their grandfather turns 80
and with my mother they
circle the wagons and leave
their home in Washington
D.C. where I grew up and
return to New York,
their ancestral metropolis
to be extended family with
us as he always wanted it.
New York is the place that
called him as well.
A place with mythos, a place
where everyone belongs.
Now I live in a neighborhood
of stage doors and students
walking down the street with
huge instrument cases,
the dancers pirouette on
Lincoln Center Plaza and
clatter down the street in
high fabulous-ity.
The art of the children
making art.
He was one of the students
at the Art Students League
but he was never a child and
always a child,
that rare combination true
to his position on the
zodiac, ancient and brand
new as anyone who knew him
would say.
I'm in New York City where I
was born.
Where I have spent decades
trying to return.
Welcome home, I am told many
times.
Even by people who do not
know me or know that I was
born in Harlem USA at 130th
and 5th in the Riverton
apartments at Columbia
Presbyterian hospital where
my father was also born.
(inaudible) and I never made
it here together.
That was planned for when
children graduated from
high school.
Death sits in the
comfortable chair in the
corner of my new bedroom,
smoking a cigarette.
It is a he, sensuous and
sleek wearing a felt
brimmed hat.
He is there when I wake in
the middle of the night
sitting quietly, his smoke a
visible curl in the New York
lights that come in between
the venetian blind slats.
At first I'm startled to see
him.
He sits so near, he is so at
home.
But he doesn't move toward
me.
He simply co-habits and so
eventually I return
to sleep.
He isn't going anywhere but
he isn't going to take me
either in the morning the
chair is empty.
Which is stronger?
Death sitting in the corner
or life in New York City?
Death or my teenage sons
sleeping profoundly in the
next room growing overnight.
I love plans my new friend
Ester exalts and so do I for
nowadays I feel sometimes
like plans are what stands
between me and the end of my
life,
I'm not going to die
overnight because next
Wednesday I'm going Ester to
see an auction of 19th
century American documents
at Swan Gallery.
I am not going to die
tonight because I already
took the chicken out of the
freezer and Simon loves
roast chicken and rice for
dinner and I promised him I
would make it.
I'm not going to die tonight
because on Saturday Ferrah
and I are bundling up and
going for a walk against the
blustery winds along the
river to continue the
conversation we began almost
30 years ago when we were
both in graduate school
before I even knew my
beloved (inaudible).
"It is not easy to die
sweetie,
" he used to say to me when
I would wake in a panic
some nights.
I've seen people survive and
I know.
I'd always had bad dreams
and his words and presence
were all that ever calmed me
down, it's not easy to die.
Life force is actually
mighty and I have
life force.
It is not indelible but it
can behave like it is.
We all die but we don't die
easily.
Thought it seems he had
slipped away,
it could not have been easy.
The heart inside of him beat
all of the beats it was
allocated but in his 50
years the man lived.
Not nearly enough, but not
insufficiently.
He found his life's work
THRICE, as an activist,
as a chef, and as a painter.
He understood himself as
something larger
than himself.
His mighty extended family
of origin,
his beloved native land, and
his people.
He found love and became
part of a new extended
family and a new people, he
had children and made family
most important of all to
him.
A statute of Frederick
Douglass stands at the quiet
77th street entrance of the
New York historical society,
tall and mighty.
He is someone who journeyed
to freedom, I think,
and I was married to someone
who walked to freedom.
The culmination of the
freedom was love and family.
That's all he did, that's
what he did.
I hear my voice to my
children,
"Your father walked to
freedom."
At my father's 80 birthday I
tell the room that when
(inaudible) and I met he
told me he was not
interested in anyone who did
not love and honor
her parents.
He found too much of that.
In New York I feel joy
overwhelming and this
gratitude for (inaudible)
brought me here,
I'm sure of it, as sure as
if he whispered in my ear,
"Go Lizzy, you're so much
braver than you realize,
take the children and go."
What are the odds we used to
say.
What are the odds that we
would end up in the same
place and fall in love?
Once upon a time, halfway
around the world,
two women were pregnant at
the same time in very
different places and their
children grew up and found
each other.
It happens every day.
Thank you.
(applause)
Mrs. Obama: And
I'm supposed to talk after
that, right?
(laughter)
Hello, everyone.
I'm thrilled that all of you
could join us today for our
national poetry month
celebration with a fantastic
phenomenal, I don't know
what to say about my friend,
my girl, Elizabeth
Alexander.
She read for us this weekend
a group of friends and we
were all in tears and I'm
trying to hold it
together now.
But what a gift, what a
gift.
I want to start by thanking
the President's committee on
the Arts and the Humanities
for their leadership and
work in planning this
wonderful event and for the
outstanding work that
they're doing to bring the
arts to young people across
this country.
And again I want to thank
Elizabeth for gracing us
with her presence today.
Now you all have heard her
read from her writing.
Which is powerful so you
don't need me to tell you
that she is a genius.
You know.
It's pretty clear now.
(inaudible) And for years
Barack and I have just
treasured our friendship and
we've been spell bound with
your talent.
And as for her book "The
Light of the World,
" you know, it just takes
your breath away.
Somehow through this
beautiful memoir Elizabeth
has been able to find her
way through a crushing grief
over the loss of her
husband,
our friend (inaudible).
Hers was the kind of grief
that would leave most of us
unable to function normally.
Yet she took all that grief
and transformed it to
something beautiful and
powerful.
Not just for herself but for
anyone who has ever lost
someone they love.
So this book is not just an
achievement for her,
it's also a lifeline for
others who are overwhelmed
by their own grief.
It's Elizabeth's way of
telling us all you are not
alone, you will eventually
find your way out to the
other side and the love you
felt for the one you lost
will ultimately your
salvation.
And that's really the power
of writing.
Right?
First and foremost, writing
can be a form of healing for
the writer and for the
reader.
It can be a way of unlocking
and untangling
powerful emotions.
That's a message especially
that I want to emphasize to
the student poets who are
here today that when you
take all those painful noisy
confusing feelings that are
in your head and you find a
way to get them on a page,
then suddenly they're not so
bad.
Suddenly they don't hurt
quite as much because when
you're working through those
words and those rhythms and
those rhymes you're also
working through
those emotions.
And when you're finished,
it's amazing how liberating
you can feel.
That's true no matter what
kind of writing that you do,
whether it's poetry or
journaling or short stories,
even rap, yes, rap.
Rap is definitely poetry.
Snap, snap, snap.
But for the younger students
it's even true for the
writing you do for school,
that sort of boring stuff
that my kids work through
every day.
Every essay or report that
you write is truly an
opportunity to express
yourself hopefully you
approach your writing like
that to take all that
creativity, all that passion
from your poetry brain and
use it to unleash your
academic brain,
the same stuff working.
Here at the White House
we're guided by the belief
that the arts can be the key
to success in school and
in life.
That's why we do what we do.
We believe that deeply.
And that's the basic idea
that drives every cultural
event that we host here in
this home.
When we bring renowned
artists to the White House
and we do a lot, people come
here, it's kind of cool.
We always ask them to host a
workshop for students,
the afternoon before they
perform.
And that's exactly what
Elizabeth did just a few
hours ago with many of you
and she had a special
workshop for the student
poets,
how did you guys enjoy it?
It was good?
That's sincere -- it's
great.
She's really cool and really
smart.
Cool and smart and stylish
and beautiful.
You can have it all, right?
(laughter)
And I know that
for so many folks in this
room, particularly folks on
the committee,
have devoted their lives to
doing the exact same thing
in schools across the
country working tirelessly
to bring arts education to
our young people.
And I can't stress enough
how important that work is
-- can't stress it enough,
because we know that kids
who are involved in the arts
have higher grades,
higher graduation rates,
higher college enrollment
rates and on and on and on.
Arts is not a luxury.
Everyone needs it.
So really arts education is
the reason why so many kids
in this country get out of
bed every day,
it is the only thing that
gets them snap, snap, snap.
Come on.
So here is what we do, we
hook them with the arts and
once with we get them into
those classrooms then we can
teach them some of that
stuff they don't
really like.
Math, history, all that
stuff.
So we're not just shaping
the future for the Elizabeth
Alexander's of the world but
also the future lawyers and
teachers and scientists and
historians and
business leaders.
It's all connected.
And what I want to end today
by simply saying is thank
you to all of you in this
room, to Elizabeth,
our teachers, to all the
folks who are dedicated to
that vitally important work
because too many kids in our
country will never
experience this,
they will never learn how
the to write a poem,
never learn how to
appreciate the works of any
of the great poets, they
will never play an
instrument, they will never
be in a band or sing in
a choir.
That's something I want the
young people to understand
is that you all are blessed
just by being in this room
you are blessed and because
you are blessed it is now
your duty, Madeleine talked
about this the last time you
were here, is to pass it on.
Pass it on.
That's your job.
That's the rent you are
paying for sitting in
these seats.
Especially our Yale students
because you're coming
up next.
You guys have got to find
the young people in your
world and you got to pull
them in and give them these
opportunities and to expose
them because this kind of
stuff saves lives.
We see it every day.
It does.
Snap snap.
(laughter)
So I want to
thank everyone here for
supporting PCAH and all the
other efforts around the
country to inspire arts
education.
And music and dance and
everything else that goes on
in our schools.
And I want to thank
Elizabeth Alexander and
(inaudible) family for being
here to celebrate with us
this day and I hope you pass
it on, keep going,
keep working hard.
We are proud of you, we
believe in you,
we expect you to be habiting
-- inhabiting this home,
somebody out here has the
potential to be standing
here doing this stuff in a
few years.
So get to work.
All right?
Thank you all.
God bless.
(applause)
