From Newsweek: Inauguration poet Elizabeth Alexander – “The arts have a place in conversation”:
What message do you think Obama is sending by including a poet in the ceremony?
It’s that the arts have a place in conversation, that poetry, its distillation, its precision, its mindfulness, models for us a way that we might stop and think and choose our words with care, that we might offer our ideas and experiences to each other with precision and care, I think that’s what poetry shows us.