Tuesday, December 23, 2008

X-Rated Yale Poet at Inaugural?   [Candace de Russy]

Poet Elizabeth Alexander, who teaches English, African-American literature, and gender studies at Yale, has been chosen by Barack Obama to compose an original work to read at his inauguration. The work may not resemble, IBD comments, "Robert Frost musing that 'the land was ours.' And you may not want your children near the TV."

Alexander's best-known poem, "The Venus Hottentot," contains the following lines: "Her genitalia will float inside a labeled pickling jar," "Monsieur Cuvier investigates between my legs, poking, prodding," "Since my own genitals are public I have made other parts private."

Alexander also has been touted by radicals for an essay on the Rodney King beating, wherein she argued that "a language of black male bestiality and hypervirility, along with myths of drug abuse and 'superhuman strength,' was deployed" in King's first trial by lawyers for the police officers. "But as brutal and inexcusable as King's videotaped pummeling was," says IBD, "attorneys for both sides agreed that King's intoxication that night was no myth."

Does Alexander really represent the best in contemporary American poetry? Or, as IBD quips, would poetry at the inaugural better remain, in Frost's words, a "road not taken"?

12/23 02:25 PMShare