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Barack Obama’s favorite book of the year was, Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff, according to People.
A finalist for the 2015 National Book Awards for fiction, the novel tells the story of a marriage from two perspectives — the husband’s and the wife’s — over the course of twenty-four years. The title was NPR Morning Edition’s first book club pick.
Michelle Obama’s favorite book of the year also focuses on marriage. Obama selected, The Light of the World, by Elizabeth Alexander, a memoir about the sudden death of her husband.
This morning I woke early to read The Light of the World, Elizabeth Alexander's embrace of the sixteen years with the man she loved from the instant they met until his sudden death, at the age of fifty.
It begins with a simple sentence that is not a simple sentence, studded twice, as it is, with "but," once with a suggestive "seems," configured so that the words "tragedy" and "love" stand within near proximity. The book begins as a tender warning: "This story seems to begin with catastrophe but in fact began earlier and is not a tragedy but rather a love story."
And then Alexander, the poet many of us first saw during President Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration ("Praise Song for the Day"—I remember, do you remember?), begins her search for other beginnings. Begins to tell us about her husband, Ficre Ghebreyesus—a chef, a painter, a man of endless curiosity, a truth teller, a traveler come all the way to New Haven, CT, from his homeland of Eritrea. The man Alexander was somehow destined to meet. The man who gave Alexander her two tall beautiful sons. The man who grew her peonies, who cooked her angel food, who painted what his mind saw, who could be found in most smart sections of a book store.
The Light of the World is a crescendo, moving through history toward loss, arcing away from loss. It is a quest to understand whether memory is finite, whether a soul remains tethered, whether joy is possible—again. Its language grows more complex as the book evolves. Its repetitions become refrains. Its hope breaks like light breaks, though light is tremulous and fickle.
To have loved. To have lost. We cannot truly lose, Alexander reminds us, what we have not loved.
I was thinking of Charleston as I read this book. Of the families whose loved ones went out one evening to pray and who did not return. I was thinking of the terrible mourning that is upon that community now, the long stretch between now and the coming light for those who loved those who were taken. I was thinking of how essential it is to love out loud, to love in the moment, to look beyond the small infractions so that we spend the time we do have together, have been given, well.
I was thinking that this is not just a book for those who mourn, but for those who recognize (we all recognize) that mourning is in our own futures and that the only defense (and it is not a defense, but it is an urgency) is to give of goodness now.
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Just in time for the election, the match-ups include George Washington and Phyllis Wheatley (the first African-American female to publish a book of poetry), John F. Kennedy and Robert Frost (the first poet to perform a reading at a presidential swearing in event) and Barack Obama and Elizabeth Alexander.
Here’s more from the article: “Politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose, former New York governor Mario Cuomo once said. While it’s debatable whether this epically long and tumultuous election cycle has inspired much verse, we at the Poetry Foundation would like to think that poetry has its place at the White House regardless of who emerges as the victor on November 6.”
Renowned poet Maya Angelou has donated 300 boxes filled with her personal papers to the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Angelou had this quote in the press release: “The Schomburg is a repository of the victories and the losses of the African American experience … I am grateful that it exists so that all the children, Black and White, Asian, Spanish-Speaking, Native American, and Aleutian can know there is a place where they can go and find the truth of the peoples’ history.”
The donation contains the notes for her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and some of her most famous poems. One notable inclusion are the notes for the poem written at the request of former President Bill Clinton, On the Pulse of Morning. The video embedded above shows her reading it at Clinton’s 1993 inauguration. Several unpublished manuscripts and poems have also been included in the lot.
Her name and her work are new to me. I suspect as of January 20, 2009, her name and her work will not be new to anyone within ear's reach of Planet Earth.
On inauguration day, "Graywolf plans to publish the poem as a chapbook commemorating the event and Alexander’s participation in it with a minimum first print run of 100,000 copies. The press is also planning on reprinting all of Alexander’s works, with a focus on Black Interior (2004), a collection of essays, and American Sublime (2005), her latest collection of poems, which will be reprinted in a 20,000-copy print run.
“This is the biggest thing that could happen, for Graywolf and for Elizabeth,” Mary Matze, Graywolf publicity director, said, “It’s bigger than Oprah! The entire world is going to be watching.”
Bigger than Oprah, metaphorically speaking? I say to you, Ms. Alexander's publicist, that you dream big. Metaphorically speaking. And you could be very, very right.
I am going to sound like the voiceover man for every movie trailer ever made (and THAT man, Don LaFontaine, ironically, recently passed away) but IN A WORLD... where everything is high-tech, rush-rush, old before it's new, isn't it lovely that words (poetry, prose, music) are what we turn to for inspiration and celebration? Words to lift one's spirits out of the darkness and into the light. Words that make the Universal the One.
Springsteen writes of the silence of poets muffled by the long reign of terror-- whether it is one night or eight years--in the despair of a mad world, one's emotional Jungleland:
"Outside the streets on fire in a real death waltz Between flesh and what's fantasy and the poets down here Don't write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be"
Remember what Don McLean sang in the closing verse of his magnum opus, AMERICAN PIE: "and the poets dreamed...But not a word was spoken." American poets of late haven't had someone to inspire them, politically speaking.
What would you write to celebrate the first day of the rest of a President-elect's life?
Sometimes politics and poetry do make awfully good bedfellows. (This would be a good time to reserve a night in Lincoln's bedroom in The White House.)
Press Play to hear this interview that was recorded as a conference call on 1/07/2008 with Baba the Storyteller who spoke with me about podcasting as a storyteller.
Baba and I speak about the podcasting revolution. Comments or feed back welcome here on the blog post. Do you think I should have Baba back? Is podcasting to narrow a subject? Are we off topic fro the art of storytelling with children? Will we ever stop talking off topic of podcasting during this episode? All this and so much more on two tellers talking – the podcasting special. (more…)
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Seeking: Storytellers, storytelling lovers and storytelling organizers to help break out podcast into main stage presence bringing storytelling movement along with it.
By having a high number of content rich reviews we seek to attract the attention of the iTunes staff and get this podcast featured in iTunes main directory boosting our downloads from 2000 a month up to between 10,000 to 20,000 downloads a month.
Qualifications: Must be comfortable using iTunes or paying a (more…)
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Would you like to be a part of a storytelling conference call that supports you in your use of storytelling with children? If so, then enter your name and email address and you will receive personal invitations to participate in The Art of Storytelling with Children Conference call - most Tuesdays at 8pm Eastern.
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