A Prosaic Poem For An Occasion That Was Anything But

Elizabeth Alexander’s inaugural poem, “Praise Song for the Day,” “didn’t measure up,” David Ulin writes. “The intention, clearly, was to present a chorus of American voices, an expression of the way ‘[w]e encounter each other in words.’ Yet, except for a stanza evoking the struggles of black Americans, Alexander’s ‘Praise Song’ simply didn’t sing.”