Continuity?

As I read Harper’s poem, “Songs for the People,” I thought, without having read the post with Alexander’s inaugural poem yet, how fitting “Songs” might have been for Obama’s campaign. Granted, there is a good chance that Obama would never have been elected had he at any point suggested that all this country needs is a little “music to sooth all its sorrow.” Nevertheless, I couldn’t ignore the hopeful tone of Harper’s “Songs,” nor when I revisited the text of “Praise Song for the Day,” could I ignore Alexander's matching tone and complimentary subject. Harper’s first verse even likens her Song for the people to a battle-cry; and how many times has one or another of Obama’s speeches been called “a call to arms”? And, of course, Obama is ever the every man’s man, which is reflected in Alexander’s poem with those several verses at the beginning, spotlighting moments of necessity in any layperson’s day or life, while Harper sings to the old and young, the weary, the poor, the children and the hearts of men.

The point I’m making here is that there seems to be an endurance of theme, or perhaps consciousness, that goes beyond the persistent struggle for social and civil justice, to inspiration. Harper strove to inspire “with more abundant life” a world she saw as worn down by wrong and war; Alexander wrote of “today’s sharp sparkle” that sits on the brink, brim and cusp of a presidency whose catch phrase, “yes, we can,” is nothing if not inspiring. And, of course, the most remarkable thing has been said before: the greater global community, consisting of many races, is now [finally] being inspired.

-Lisa