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When Yale University professor Elizabeth Alexander was anointed with the responsibility to draft and read a poem at President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration on Jan. 20, she became only the fourth poet to be granted such a grand international stage. Only two other presidents have made poets a part of their pre-presidential shindig.
John F. Kennedy appointed Robert Frost to read a poem in 1961. And Bill Clinton did it twice, selecting Maya Angelou to read for his first term in 1993 and Miller Williams for his second term in 1997. Obama had a wealth of wondrous wordsmiths from which he was able to make his choice for the occasion. Here are seven other poets who may have also made supreme appointments if circumstances had enabled it. |
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Gwendolyn Brooks: Alexander herself said that Brooks, the first-ever African American to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize, would have made an outstanding choice to read before Obama had she not passed at age 73 in 2000. Therefore, Alexander, 46, the incoming chairwoman of Yale’s African American studies department, will delve into the works of Brooks for inspiration. |
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Maya Angelou: It goes without saying that the author of “Why the Caged Bird Sings” is a world-renowned poet of tremendous depth and range and blessed with a rhythmic writing style that captivates and serenades the senses of her audiences. |
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Nikki Giovanni: Hailed as the “Princess of Black Poetry,” this Fisk University graduate was an avowed admirer of Malcolm X and has unapologetically championed civil rights for decades. Giovanni has never stopped writing and speaking on black issues even as she ascended to become a distinguished professor at Virginia Tech and was picked as one of Oprah Winfrey’s “Living Legends.” |
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Rita Dove: This University of Virginia professor was the Poet Laureate of the United States and Consultant to the Library of Congress from 1993 to 1995 and performed the same duty for the Commonwealth of Virginia from 2000 to 2004. Among the plethora of awards she has earned, Dove won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1987. As a Presidential Scholar in 1970, the Akron, Ohio native graduated summa cum laude from Miami [Ohio] University, got her master’s degree from Iowa University and then held a Fulbright Scholarship at the Universitat Tubingen in Germany. |
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Alice Walker: Walker is best known for penning the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Color Purple,” which was commissioned for a major motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Oprah Winfrey. |
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Toni Morrison: Though she is not a poet, per say, Morrison writes extraordinary novels “characterized by visionary force and poetic import, [which] gives life to essential aspect of American reality,” read the citation when Morrison became the first African American female to ever win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, an award a step higher than the Pulitzer. Morrison had already captured the Pulitzer Prize for her incredibly poignant novel, “Beloved,” which was optioned for a motion picture of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover. |
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Yusef Komunyakaa: Komunyakaa did a tour of duty during the Vietnam War as an information specialist and received the Bronze Star before he rose meteorically in the world of poetry. Komunyakaa is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet (1994) who is renowned for penning 11 poetry volumes replete with short lines, simple language and a jazzy feel. He was educated at the University of Colorado, the University of California-Irvine and Colorado State before going on to teach at Indiana University and Princeton. |
