American Blue: Selected Poems

by Elizabeth Alexander

Elizabeth Alexander was Barack Obama's inaugural poet. Her work has been inspired by a wide range of influence, from history, literature, art and music to the 'rich infinity' of the African-American experience. Hers is a vital and vivid poetic voice on race, gender, politics and motherhood. AMERICAN BLUE is her first British publication. Many of her poems bring history alive and singing into the present in highly musical, sharply contemporary narratives, which use many different forms and voices to cover subjects ranging from slave rebellions, the Civil Rights movement, Muhammed Ali and Toni Morrison to the lives of jazz musicians and the 'Venus Hottentot', a 19th-century African woman exhibited at carnivals.

144 pages, Paperback

First published April 27, 2006

About the author

Elizabeth Alexander is a Quantrell Award-winning American poet, essayist, playwright, university professor, and scholar of African-American literature and culture. She teaches English language/literature, African-American literature, and gender studies at Yale University. Alexander was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard during the 2007-08 academic year.

Alexander's poems, short stories, and critical writings have been widely published in such journals and periodicals as The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Village Voice, The Women's Review of Books, and The Washington Post. Her play Diva Studies, which was performed at Yale's School of Drama, garnered her a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship as well as an Illinois Arts Council award.

On December 17th, 2008 it was announced that she will compose a poem which she shall recite at the Presidential Inauguration of Barack Obama in January 2009.

Reviews

[Lumberjuan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I much preferred her more personal work to her somewhat more academic and less expressive historically based work.