Elizabeth Alexander's
"Praise Song for the Day": Analysis

A BESTWORD ANALYSIS

Elizabeth Alexander’s poem, “Praise Song for the Day” (2009), has a structure and style that is known within African literary circles as a “praise song”.  These praise songs are traditional African forms of poetry that use laudatory epithets (descriptive word-pictures or word-paintings) to capture the soul and essence of the subject.  This is why much of Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day” is made up of short, descriptive images (word-paintings) that last for little more than a line or two, but describe vast amounts of American history, issues, and peoples.  Even lines that weren’t meant to evoke imagery (i.e.  “We need to find a place where we are safe.” (Line 23)) still capture the emotions and significance of the subject matter on which Alexander is focused.  Elizabeth Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day” is meant as a short, but epic, praise song to describe the important “word-paintings” of the histories of African Americans, American immigrants, and the importance of the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

Imagery, as can be the case for praise songs, is one of the most prominent tools Elizabeth Alexander uses in her inaugural poem, “Praise Song for the Day.”  In actuality, the first five stanzas of Alexander’s “Praise Song for the day” is made up primarily of imagery prose, describing in short lines of no more than a few words the many different aspects of quiet American life that could find in common much of what the average American encounters in their daily routine: “Someone is stitching up a hem…” (Line 7); “A woman and her son wait for the bus.” (Line 13); “A farmer considers the changing sky.” (Line 14).  Even perhaps the most recognizable image of American multiculturalism, the diverse scene of urban street-music, finds itself mentioned in the fourth stanza of Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day”: “Someone is trying to make music somewhere, / with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum, / with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.” (Lines 10-12).  The significance of these lines is their power to invoke mental imagery that has much in common with the essence of the everyday American condition.

     The introductory stanza of Elizabeth Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day”, “Each day we go about our business, / walking past each other, catching each other's / eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.” (Lines 1-3), captures the essence of the active hum of a city sidewalk or a small-town street, the setting where the existences of American citizens are intermingled and public.  It’s unclear whether she means to describe American sidewalks as cold and impersonal, or simply insignificant monotonies of our daily grind, but it is undeniable that a street is a common ground that all Americans, of all walks of life, whether panhandler or presidential elect,  share as citizens of a common country.  Alexander feels that the familiar street bustle has an important place in the heart of American culture.

     This public stage engendered by the first stanza serves as host to the “noise and bramble, thorn and din” (Line 5) of the second, more busy stanza.  Here Alexander describes in “Praise Song for the Day” the tangled (bramble), loud (din), near painful (thorn) American streets where, most importantly, we have “…each / one of our ancestors on our tongues.” (Line 6).  These “ancestors on our tongues” (Lines 6) are the broad collages of immigrant peoples (indeed America is a nation of immigrants), and the languages and cultures they bring to complete the contemporary phenomenon we know today as the United States.  It can be argued that here Alexander is trying to portray America as a country as inclusive as it is, and most importantly, diverse in its citizenship; an auditory word-painting, if you will, of much of the common theme portrayed by Barack Obama during his presidential running.  In many ways, the election of Barack Obama, a Black president who was the son of a Kenyan immigrant, could not better personify the image, the word-painting essence, of a nation that has grown to become an epicenter of race and culture.

     Following the imagery of the introductory stanzas of Elizabeth Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day” are the two stanzas that describe the initiative and determination of the American people who took part in the development of the United States as a nation:

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark     
the will of some one and then others, who said     20
I need to see what's on the other side.

I know there's something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

                        (Elizabeth Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day”, 2009, Stanzas 7 and 8)

       These six lines are carefully selected, yet broadly applicable, “folk saying”-esque prose for what can be argued as being the common passions of the immigrant American peoples who first came to the United States.  The “dirt roads” (Line 19) that perhaps lead West across the country could have been the paths immigrant farmers from Europe used to start their new life.  This strength and prospect was perhaps the foundation of the need to strike West across a wide open country; to see, as Alexander puts it, “…what’s on the other side.” (Line 21).  The line, “I know there’s something better down the road.” (22), describes much of the common opportunities immigrants sought when they came over the Atlantic to live in a later industrialized United States.  By leaving her homes and coming to the United States to give their children opportunities that they never had in their former countries, immigrant parents were making huge leaps of faith that America would have more to offer their families.  The Line,“We need to find a place where we are safe” (Line 23), could be read as the plight suffered by refugees who were fleeing their homes overseas and were seeking sanctuary in a country where they would not be persecuted for their race, ethnicity, or religion.  Indeed the United States has played a major role in international refugee families, with the United States often being their first choice for a home after they had been displaced.  And finally, the line, “We walk into that which we cannot yet see.” (Line 24) could describe the resolve and bravery of the immigrants who came to America, leaving everything they knew for the strange and unfamiliar country that was the United States.  The seventh and eighth stanza of Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day” describes much of the purpose and hope of the peoples that have made up the United States long before even its Declaration of Independence.

      Now, perhaps the most involving lines of Elizabeth Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day”, and the two stanzas that have been the defining grace of Alexander’s poem in the eyes of many of her critics, is the prose she uses to describe the plight of African American slaves prior to the Emancipation, and the triumph a Black president being elected from those social roots represents:

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.      25
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.     30

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.

                                (Elizabeth Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day”, 2009, Lines 25-31)

      The two “Say it plain” stanzas (Lines 25 -31) are very powerful evocations acknowledging the African American deaths caused by a life bound by slavery.  By “Say(ing) it plain” (Line 25), Elizabeth Alexander is grasping, with both hands, the harsh facts that years of African American slavery bring to light.  She asks the reader to “Sing the names of the dead who brought us here” (26), to praise and acknowledge the pain and suffering of the African Americans who toiled and labored before the United States was even an independent country.  Perhaps the most striking description of these stanzas are the lines “…built / brick by brick the glittering edifices / they would then keep clean and work inside of.”, (Lines 28-30), a particularly potent poetic image of a hard working people who played a major role in the advancement of the United States but were still denied the credit their labor was due.  Even the first line of the following stanza seems more in place with the “Say it plain” stanzas; It’s line, “Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.”, seeming to be a declaration of triumph at the success they have finally achieved after the years of slavery and discrimination through the significance of the election of the African American president, Barack Obama.

      Indeed these are the lines of prose that Elizabeth Alexander has made a cornerstone of her literary career.  After having nurtured a deep emotional connection to the themes of African American slaves, their following emancipation, and the issues of contemporary American racism as it exists today (i.e. Alexander’s poems: “Island Number Four”, “Emancipation”, and “Race”), it’s no surprise that Alexander should shine brightest when recounting the years before the American Civil War, and expressing her own empathy to the touching subject matter of her own heritage. 

     (In all honesty, your humble writer feels that lines 25 to 31 exist as their own perfect lines of Alexandrian prose, existing only incidentally within the body of a commissioned work that she had to compose to the specifications of the occasion; a body of literary tissue that, while still prose worth noting, perhaps only really served Alexander’s subconscious muse as a vessel for her own deeply sewn emotions on the significance of what the election of a Black president represents to her as, indeed, a Black woman with a great deal of emotional stock in the subject matter.  Personally, the rest of Elizabeth Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day” was meant to carry the overlying theme of the Obama administration, a theme more of wholesome inclusiveness and common citizenship, while lines 25 to 31, the “Say it Plain” stanzas, seem to be characteristically Alexander’s.  It is also your humble writer’s opinion that if Alexander stood on the inaugural podium on Jan 20th and recited only the “Say it Plain” stanzas, her prose would have been far better accepted by critics and better served its purpose as an honest work of inspiration.)

     Following the “Say it plain” stanzas, are the more unifying and politically charged stanzas of Elizabeth Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day”, the “What if the mightiest word is love?” (Stanzas 12 and 13) stanzas:
    
Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more     35
than you need. 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 pre-empt grievance.

                    (Elizabeth Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day”, 2009, Stanzas 12 and 13)

     Elizabeth Alexander’s “What if the mightiest word is love?” stanzas (Stanzas 12 and 13), of “Praise Song for the day”, are deeply intimate, and can easily be argued, with their common theme of “love”, to be trying to bring American citizens together under their common humanities, but certain lines (i.e. “love thy neighbor as thyself” (Line 34), “take no more / than you need” (Lines 35-36), and “…no need to pre-empt grievance” (Line 39)) seem to carry with them, even if only incidentally, a certain literary air of criticism of the former Bush administration.  Indeed, while “love thy neighbor as thyself” (Line 34) and “take no more / than you need” (Lines 35-36) are either biblical proverbs or common sayings that are associated with a more utopic society, but the line “…no need to pre-empt grievance” (Line 39) is a little too deliberate in its wording to ignore as not a more diplomatic prick at the Republican foreign policies of the last eight years (i.e. Iraq).  Alexander could be attempting to capture here, a tiny praise song in these few lines, to protest the mere love of “national(ity)” (Line 37) and embrace the “love that casts a widening pool of light” (Line 38) throughout the world, the hopes of many Americans that the Obama administration will bring into being.

     And finally, Elizabeth Alexander, after poetically traveling through the years of American history with her praise song, has finally, in its conclusion, reached not only contemporary America, but the very date of Obama’s inauguration, Jan 20th, 2009.  Here she has decided to conclude “Praise Song for the Day” with a few words, a small but deliberate word-painting, to describe the emotions such a date not only represents to African Americans, but to Americans of all walks of life:

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,     40
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

                               (Elizabeth Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day”, 2009, Lines 40-43)

     Elizabeth Alexander has chosen to conclude “Praise Song for the Day” with an essence-capturing word-painting that describes the human emotion that would have been feverous at the scene of Obama’s inauguration.  The hope and promise of the change that Obama’s presidency represents to American citizens, to Alexander, could have been so charged that Americans would have believed their country capable of anything; “any thing can be made, any sentence begun” (Line 41).  Indeed, the energy of the scene would have been so striking, that Alexander chose to conclude her final stanza with the line, “On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp” (Line 42), a description of the eve-like atmosphere that the final day before Barack Obama taking office would have felt like. 

     And lastly, the final line of Elizabeth Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day”, “praise song for walking forward in that light” (Line 43), describes the hopes and aspirations of a nation as they move forward from (what Alexander would have believed to have been) the failures of the former Bush administration.  To Alexander, Obama represents a new and extraordinary movement away from not only the government and social problems that have done nothing but drag down the spirit of the United States since its independence, but a beginning of a new era in American history and the turning of a page that had has been written by other great American leaders and social activists.  It is a praise song for moving forward with the unified emotions and the passions of a colorful and multicultural people who see a brighter, more humane future on the horizon, thanks to a government that they now believe better represents them as a people and will act with the interest of all humanity at heart.

     Elizabeth Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day” is a praise song that she uses to capture the emotions, passions, and soul of a nation that is excitedly moving forward to a future and an administration that writers like Alexander feel has been a long time coming.  After the years of slavery and discrimination against African Americans, as a Black president, Barack Obama represents a man who has been judged by the content his character and found worthy of the highest office in their nation.  To multicultural immigrants, Obama represents the inclusion and representation that they have not yet seen in their government.  To all American citizens Obama represents the end of a troublesome administration, and changes in policy that have left many feeling powerless to stop.  To the world, Obama represents a change in foreign policy that embraces the proverbs “love thy neighbor as thyself” (Line 34) and “take no more / than you need” (Lines 35-36), and sees no need to “pre-empt grievance” (Line 39) to the destruction of a nation.  Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day” attempts to capture the essence of Jan 20th, 2009, the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

Written by Jordan Dickie
CEO, Executive Editor
BestWord SEO Copywriting Services
jordandickie@bestword.ca

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