Praise Song for the Day

I mean, I have reproduced it in a book, but unlike everything else I had ever written, I knew that it had to live and do something in that moment.

I knew that I had to, in some way, think about you know, America, all in capital letters, right? Like, what is this vast place? And how do you offer simple and straightforward words that can both capture the occasion, lift up the occasion? So to the title Praise Song for the Day, I was invoking the African idea of a praise song, which is not about saying, here's this wonderful president, but rather about saying, you know, we are going to praise everything that brought us to this moment.

We're going to praise meaning lift up.

We're going to lift this up together.

We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain that many have died for this day.

That was Elizabeth Alexander reading her poem Praise Song for the Day at President Obama's first inauguration.

That would have been in 2009.

That's Creole for something extra.

In Praise Song for the Day, her poem composed for President Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration, poet Elizabeth Alexander spoke about love beyond marital, filial, national.

Love that casts a widening pool of light, love with no need to preempt grievance.

In her bestselling memoir, The Light of the World, author Alexander warns, "Half of the things are as they seem.