Alexander's poem uses references to American poetry (Whitman and Sandburg) and joins it to African praise song to express the voice and spirit of contemporary America by appealing for a new and wider sense of community to combat our present economic and spiritual problems.
I think a more careful reading with some respect would be beneficial.
Personally, I like it. And I especially love the idea that "we encounter each other in words" and that language makes up our reality. That we can manipulate our reality by choosing more positive words to express, like love. Alexander is by no means the first to convey that message, but I thought she did in a very nice way, very relevant to our times.
I found a bit of information regarding the historical allusions in the poem, as well as a bit of interpretation here:
http://blog.shmoop.com/2009/01/21/sh...eth-alexander/
Honestly - only Americans with their aesthetic in their hearts, and not in their heads can possibly view this as a good poem. Think people - it's almost ridiculous, and that article is rubbish too - it brown noses all the other mediocre poems before this one. Even Frost's was doggerel.
As aesthetics comes from a Greek word meaning "things perceptible to the senses" , which was also what Kant meant when he used the term, it is difficult to understand the implied insistence that appreciation is confined to the intellect.
I mean people aren't thinking, and they are preoccupied with the context of the poem, in the new "phase" of America, with the new "hope" that Obama somehow will bring about a change, and an age of prosperity. The poem then gets its semi-good reputation, from the fact that it is the poem of "the new age", the first poem, and people judge it like that, rather than looking at it and saying, "A 12 year old could have written this."
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