Today, our culture puts all its value on science. Those are the classes and
jobs that pay. But it’s our poetry that for hundreds of years, has upset
the establishment’s apple cart, that has brought us close together and
created a sense of community and experience of being alive that nothing
else can in the same way. It’s Poets that have challenged us to think
differently. Recently, our National attention gets inspired by the poetry
shared at revolutions in Washington whether it’s MLK’s “I have a dream,”
during the Human Rights March of 1963, Maya Angelou’s, “On the Pulse of
Morning,” who followed Robert Frost as the second poet ever to read at a
president’s inauguration or this week’s guest, Elizabeth Alexander, the
only other poet to read following Bill Clinton’s presidency when she read
“Praise Song for the Day” at our country’s first black President, Barak
Obama’s inauguration.