Convocation Speaker - Final Draft

Poet Appeals for Peaceful Fight

On a day that commemorates an important political fighter in the country's battle for civil rights, Elizabeth Alexander chose not to focus on politics and interracial discord – instead, she focused on love.

The speaker at Monday's Martin Luther King Jr. Convocation stressed the importance of the tougher kinds of love – love of labor, love of justice, love of one's country – "the kind of love that takes work, but moves us toward the future." Alexander, who is chair of the Department of African American Studies at Yale University, spoke about Dr. King's legacy as a legacy of love that was first instilled in the hearts of Americans fighting for justice when Dr. King was alive - a legacy that is still prevalent to this day.

Alexander cited Dr. King numerous times in her speech, occasionally repeating phrases of his various speeches to emphasize their importance to the audience. Like Dr. King, Alexander maintained that peace will most effectively preserve its place in society if a focus on love and tolerance triumphs over negative worries about war and political conflicts.

Alexander borrowed a phrase from one of King's many speeches to emphasize to the crowd that in order to bring about this positive change, we must "transform our imminent cosmic elegy into a psalm of creative fulfillment." This balance between the struggles of reality and the encouraging prospects of peace is, according to Alexander, the responsibility taken on by poets to convey their message to a larger audience.

She introduced used various excerpts of the poetry of June Jordan, another female writer who believes strongly in the power of love as a weapon for peace. Referring to Jordan as "simultaneously a pacifist and a fighter," Alexander not only praised the poet's ideals but also her method of transferring them to paper. Stating that poetry has the responsibility to create "images that compel through the specificity of language," Alexander praised Jordan for her moving words, which she credits as inspiration for her own poetry.

Alexander's poetic ability garnered enough national recognition in recent years to earn her the honor of delivering the invocation at the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009. The speaker ended her address with a reading of her poem "Praise Song for the Day," which was written specifically for the inauguration. She mentioned that she thought she would never read this poem in a public setting after the inauguration, assuming it had already served its purpose. However, on the holiday that Alexander called "a happy measure of progress" for the civil rights movement, the poem was decisively full of "words to consider and reconsider."

The air of the crowded Weaver Chapel remained still and silent while Alexander gracefully delivered "Praise Song for the Day" until stepping down from the pulpit, when the audience responded with loud applause and a standing ovation.


Gretchen Dellner
Elizabeth Alexander Convocation
Final