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I certainly didn’t. Good poetry isn’t easy. Alexander’s massive audience naturally assumed this was to be good poetry — if it wasn’t, why was it on the program? — which meant it would have to be considered with some deliberate care for its virtues to unfold. I, for one, wasn’t in the mood for that. My mind was on Obama’s speech. An expert reading of an apposite poem I already knew by heart might have been nice, Even a reading of a new poem that we’d already had a few days to read by ourselves and reflect on might have worked. But poetry isn’t something to be unveiled like the new Bud Light ads during the Superbowl. I listened to Alexander just long enough for her to show me she wasn’t going to be able to save the day with a socko delivery, and then I, almost gratefully, tuned her out. Barack Obama seemed engrossed, but I bet he’d read “Praise Song for the Day” beforehand.
And wrote Erica Wagner of the Times: “Praise Song for the Day was unmemorable. How do I know that for sure? Why, because I can’t remember it. Two minutes after it was spoken I couldn’t remember it.”
