Poetic in many ways

Toward the end of an interview with President Richard Brodhead last week, after he'd told me what books he read over break (for the record, among them were a biography of Obama and The Tender Bar) he confessed something:

"I taught the poet for Obama's inauguration, you know."

I hadn't, but it makes sense. Brodhead, long-winded and long a lover of words, taught and chaired Yale's English department, where Elizabeth Alexander is both a graduate and a professor. According to the Yale Daily News, Brodhead taught Alexander in a non-fiction prose writing class when she was a sophomore.

It seems that although she later turned her focus to poetry, she may have gleaned a bit about delivery from former professors, at least according to the group I was watching with. She spoke carefully, evoking the oft-mimicked cadence of the man himself.

And although Alexander was Obama's official choice—marking only the fourth poet to be included in a presidential inauguration—The Associated Press also called on poets to compose poems to commemorate the occasion.

Alexander was selected for the 2007 Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers by Lucille Clifton, Stephen Dunn, and Jane Hirshfield. Hirshfield spent a recent Fall weekend at Duke as the Blackburn visiting poet.

The poem will be released in a chapbook Feb. 6, according to the AP.