Poet who teaches in Connecticut asked to read her work at Inauguration

Elizabeth Alexander, an award-winning poet and Yale professor of African American studies and English literature, has been selected to compose and read an original poem at the inauguration of President Barack Obama on January 20, 2009.

“I'm completely thrilled to have been chosen for this honor,” Alexander said. “Barack Obama is a man who understands the power and integrity of language. To be asked to turn my own words to this occasion and for this person is all but overwhelming.”

Alexander is only the fourth poet in modern American history to read at a presidential swearing-in ceremony. Her predecessors are Robert Frost, who recited “The Gift Outright” at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, and Maya Angelou and Miller Williams, who read poems they had created for the occasion at President Clinton's inaugurations. (The above paragraphs were originally reported in the Yale Daily News, 12/19/08)

This is the poem that Robert Frost recited at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, "The Gift Outright." Some accounts of the inauguration say that he intended to read a different poem that he had written especially for the event, but that he found he could not read the words on the page that day, and so recited this poem, which he knew by heart.

The land was ours before we were the land’s She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. She was ours In Massachusetts, in Virginia, But we were England’s, still colonials, Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed. Something we were withholding made us weak Until we found out that it was ourselves We were withholding from our land of living, And forthwith found salvation in surrender. Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westward, But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she will become.