Elizabeth Alexander
Elizabeth Alexander is a Quantrell Award-winning American poet, essayist, playwright, university professor, and scholar of African-American literature and culture. She teaches English language/literature, African-American literature, and gender studies at Yale University. Alexander was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard during the 2007-08 academic year.
Alexander's poems, short stories, and critical writings have been widely published in such journals and periodicals as The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Village Voice, The Women's Review of Books, and The Washington Post. Her play Diva Studies, which was performed at Yale's School of Drama, garnered her a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship as well as an Illinois Arts Council award.
On December 17th, 2008 it was announced that she will compose a poem which she shall recite at the Presidential Inauguration of Barack Obama in January 2009.
“What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.”
“Using the voice is a physical act, one that first announces the existence of the body of residence and then trumpets its arrival in a public space.”
“...now I know my capacity for aweis infinite: this thirst is permanent,the well bottomless, my good fortune vast.”
“Poetry is what you findin the dirt in the corner,overhear on the bus, Godin the details, the only wayto get from here to there.”