Yale poet part of inauguration

WASHINGTON – After a hiatus of more than a decade, poetry is returning to the inauguration of the American president.

The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies announced Wednesday that Elizabeth Alexander, a prize-winning poet at Yale University, will read at the swearing-in next month of President-elect Barack Obama.

It is the first time that “poetry’s old-fashioned praise,” as Robert Frost called it, will be featured at the ceremony since 1997.

Alexander, 45, would be only the fourth poet to read at a swearing-in after Frost, who read at John F. Kennedy’s in 1961, Maya Angelou, who read at Bill Clinton’s in 1993, and Miller Williams, who read in Clinton’s second inaugural in 1997, according to government officials.

Alexander, a professor of African-American studies, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2005 and winner of the Jackson Poetry Prize last year.

She said she was overjoyed at the inaugural honor.

“I am obviously profoundly honored and thrilled,” she said. “Not only to have a chance to have some small part of this extraordinary moment in American history.  …  This incoming president of ours has shown in every act that words matter, that words carry meaning, that words carry power, that words are the medium with which we communicate across difference, and that words have tremendous possibilities and those possibilities are not empty.”