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The story seems to begin with catastrophe but in fact began earlier and is not a tragedy but rather a love story. Perhaps tragedies are only tragedies in the presence of love, which confers meaning to loss. Loss is not felt in the absence of love.
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Elizabeth Alexander |
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Poetry is what you find in the dirt in the corner, overhear on the bus, God
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Elizabeth Alexander |
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now I know my capacity for awe
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Elizabeth Alexander |
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What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.
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poetry
inspirational
obama
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Elizabeth Alexander |
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ac27dd6
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Art replaces the light that is lost when the day fades, the moment passes, the evanescent extraordinary makes its quicksilver. Art tries to capture that which we know leaves us, as we move in and out of each other's lives, as we all must eventually leave this earth. Great artists know that shadow, work always against the dying light, but always knowing that the day brings new light and that the ocean which washes away all traces on the sand..
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Elizabeth Alexander |
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Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don't let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand.
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Elizabeth Alexander |
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2a0e728
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I have not yet learned to use our television DVR. One of the points of marriage is that you split labor. In the olden days that meant one hunted and one gathered; now it means one knows where the tea-towels are kept and the other knows how to program the DVR, for why should we both have to know?
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marriage
love
tasks
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Elizabeth Alexander |
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3eb2623
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Using the voice is a physical act, one that first announces the existence of the body of residence and then trumpets its arrival in a public space.
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persona
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Elizabeth Alexander |
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18c8190
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In the absence of organized religion, faith abounds, in the form of song and art and food and strong arms.
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faith
religion
song
food
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Elizabeth Alexander |
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63808b4
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Loss is not felt in the absence of love.
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Elizabeth Alexander |
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396b0b7
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It's a fact: black people in this country die more easily, at all ages, across genders. Look at how young black men die, and how middle-aged black men drop dead, and how black women are ravaged by HIV/AIDS. The numbers graft to poverty but they also graph to stresses known and invisible. How did we come here, after all? Not with upturned chins and bright eyes but rather in chains, across a chasm. But what did we do? We built a nation, and w..
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death
blackness
race
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Elizabeth Alexander |
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0aa982d
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Each of us made it possible for the other. We got something done. Each believed in the other unsurpassingly.
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Elizabeth Alexander |
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Poetry, I tell my students, is idiosyncratic. Poetry is where we are ourselves, (though Sterling Brown said "Every 'I' is a dramatic 'I'") digging in the clam flats for the shell that snaps, emptying the proverbial pocketbook. Poetry is what you find in the dirt in the corner, overhear on the bus, God in the details, the only way to get from here to there. Poetry (and now my voice is rising) is not all love, love, love and I'm sorry the dog..
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poetry
love
inspirational
social-media
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Elizabeth Alexander |