Great Regulars: The poem's argument was as hard to remember

as its language; it dissolved at once into the circumambient solemnity. [Elizabeth] Alexander has reminded us of what Angelou's, Williams's, and even Robert Frost's inauguration poems already proved: that the poet's place is not on the platform but in the crowd, that she should speak not for the people but to them.

from Adam Kirsch: The New Republic: The Plank: Adam Kirsch on Elizabeth Alexander's Bureaucratic Verse

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