Subscribe by RSSWanted: Inaugural Poems
Posted by Lisa Forrest on January 15, 2009
Poets! Are you excited about the inauguration? Why not write a poem saying so? David Lampe sent us his poem “An Iaugural Occassion” and we thought it was just grand. Please share your presidential poems with us through the comment link below. Happy Inauguration!
An Inaugural Occasion : What will we have? by Dr. David Lampe
An inventory a la Angelou,
an analysis milled by an Arkansas
Williams, or an after event party piece
of Southern strum and drink by Dickey?
Or a frosty memory piece
when prepared cranky couplets
blew away in blinding January gleam?
No, no instead Elizabeth Alexander
who announces”I believe
in symbols; symbols bear power;
symbols demand power”and looks
to Auden and Gwendolyn Brooks
will “attend to the moment itself”
for all of us to add celebration
and cerebration to ceremony.
Robert Klein Engler said
.INAUGURATION DAY.
–Robert Klein Engler
If you sit on the stone bench near Bayou
St. John, then you see the equestrian statue
of General P.G.T. Beauregard–Confederate
States of America–ringed by holly bushes.
It is January, but a few magnolias bloom
across the street in City Park, tricked to come
out by a week of warm weather. The bayou
ducks know better, tucked asleep on shore.
A star somewhere flares into a nebula.
Events slip from our hands on their own oil.
Rome endured its slide well after Caligula.
The pot of politics is set again to boil.
Mary Durlak said
I hear America singing!
from “Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood” by Walt Whitman:
Steer then with good strong hand and wary eye O helmsman
thou carriest great companions
Charles Bachman said
Glint of Promise
for Barack Obama January 20, 2009
In late autumn
just before dusk
through the tall shroud
of sharp-bladed
withered grass
burns a glint of sun
so intense it becomes
at that destined moment
the one bright crystal
that can ignite, unite
all our lost vastness
into one overwhelming light.
Naila Francis said
Please see this link:
http://www.thespiritedwoman.com/go_blog_blog_blog/2009/01/the-cup-of-hope-carries-our-joy-tears.html
Lisa Forrest said
These are all so wonderful. Thanks for sharing!
Carole Weatherford said
AMERICAN BAPTISM
By Carole Boston Weatherford
See this link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvZ1AaZOnQo
Mark K. Fulk said
Tribunal
For the past eight years, call a tribunal,
a war-crimes judgment day repudiation:
stark disavowal worldwide, finding us chained,
unable to progress forward, gateway
unattained, moral superiority mired
in evil acts unacknowledged, no hope.
I ask for a seat on the raised dais, hope
for punishment, the only known gateway
to justice, safety, not in the past mired;
learning from the past, revealing all chained
guarded secrets, warranted tribunal,
call for ultimate repudiation.
Livid, moving forward now through gateway,
(thwarted, silenced land, repudiation)
we see our best is called, renewed, not chained.
As Americans, call a tribunal,
no tyranny under the name of hope,
traversing the new while the old is mired.
Those blinded by their fear block our gateway
forward; but forewarned is not stopped, not chained,
not resisted as history writes her blessed hope
faint on the hearts of the dazed tribunal,
working definition, a lakebed mired
as we struggle forth, repudiation.
Obama, move us beyond being chained
I pray; find us a rehabilitated hope
sustained on the wings of dove, buoyant gateway,
flaming in glorious rainbow, not mired:
pre-hope, ultimate repudiation
stopped in the now, televised tribunal.
Obama, resist what has been set, Bush-mired
for you to trudge through; forward path (not chained)
no matter how rough; they blocked tribunal
before; they wanted to destroy the hope
dawning, Reagan/Bush repudiation;
yet Clinton found a new, onward gateway.
Now stand forth, a people not chained or mired;
for us: tribunal, repudiation,
the gateway is our Obama, our hope.
everymfa said
Lovely! I don’t have one to share yet, but just want to say that I like very much Mr. Engler’s classical, though morose, quartrains and Mr. Fulk’s generous sestina and Dr. Lampe’s elegant invitation. Surprising that Ms. Alexander’s poem was anything but symbolic. Happy and sad times indeed that the president’s inauguration inspires so much poetry!
Carol Townsend said
Inauguration
The manager turned off
the store sound system–
without muzak mask,
notes from a Jewish man’s
violin, an Asian’s cello,
a black man’s horn,
and a white woman’s piano
rose and whirled and danced
no more harmoniously
than the spontaneous sounds
of delight uttered
by a young Latino couple,
a Nigerian sales clerk,
and two middle-aged
suburbanites clustered around
a televison screen on the counter
of a clothing shop
on a cold January day.
Carol Townsend
Lisa Forrest said
Lovely Carol– and you figured out how to post! : ) Thanks to everyone for their poems!!