A necessary addendum to yesterday’s post, in which I may have been a bit cranky (because, I don’t know, I have a broken foot and a sprained hand and live in a multiple-story walkup, perhaps…? And my husband’s company is announcing layoffs and oh, yeah, no pay raises this year at all…)
Because I was disappointed in Jon Stewart’s response to our inaugural poem, I knew Colbert would come through for poets, and now I have even more of a crush on him than ever. And Elizabeth does pretty well too:
Elizabeth Alexander on the Colbert Report
(Thanks to Kelli A. for the link)
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
Tim
Thanks for sharing the link, I would have missed it. I, too, was disappointed with her poem the other day, which felt very flat to me, but I wasn’t disappointed with her performance here. Good on Colbert for having her.
Did you see Marvin Bell’s attempt at the poem? http://timothy-green.org/blog/2009/01/yes-we-can-by-marvin-bell/
That would have been better…but I REALLY wanted Patricia Smith. How great would she have been?