Elizabeth Alexander is a poet, essayist, playwright, and teacher. She is the author of four books of poems, The Venus Hottentot, Body of Life, Antebellum Dream Book, and American Sublime, which was one of three finalists for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. She is also a scholar of African-American literature and culture and recently published a collection of essays, The Black Interior. She has read her work across the U.S. and in Europe, the Caribbean, and South America, and her poetry, short stories, and critical prose have been published in dozens of periodicals and anthologies. She has received many grants and honors, most recently the Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellowship for work that contributes to improving race relations in American society and furthers the broad social goals of the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, and the 2007 Jackson Prize for Poetry, awarded by Poets and Writers. She was a professor at Yale University, and for the academic year 2007-2008 and a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

Elizabeth Alexander is the author of five previous books of poetry, including American Sublime, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and two books of essays, including The Black Interior. She is the chair of the African American Studies Department at Yale University.

 

Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990-2010
Click to order via Amazon

Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: Graywolf Press (September 28, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1555975682
ISBN-13: 978-1555975685
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1 inches

The first career retrospective by the award-winning poet Elizabeth Alexander, including her poem delivered at Barack Obama's presidential inauguration

Over twenty years, Elizabeth Alexander has become one of America's most exciting and important poets, and her selection as the inaugural poet by President Barack Obama confirmed her place as one of the indispensable voices of our time. Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990'2010 gathers twenty pages of new poetry, along with generous selections from her previous work. The result is the definitive volume to date by this American master.

We crave radiance in this austere world,
light in the spiritual darkness.
Learning is the one perfect religion,
its path correct, narrow, certain, straight.
'from 'Allegiance'

 

Power and Possibility: Essays, Interviews, Reviews
Click to order via Amazon

Paperback: 200 pages
Publisher: University of Michigan Press (August 10, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0472069373
ISBN-13: 978-0472069378
Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches

A volume in the Poets on Poetry series, which collects critical works by contemporary poets, gathering together the articles, interviews, and book reviews by which they have articulated the poetics of a new generation.

Elizabeth Alexander is considered one of the country's most gifted contemporary poets, and the publication of her essays in The Black Interior in 2004 established her as an astute critic and cultural commentator as well. Arnold Rampersad has called Alexander "one of the brightest stars in our literary sky . . . a superb, invaluable commentator on the American scene." In this new collection of her essays, reviews, and interviews, Alexander again focuses on African American artistic production, particularly poetry, and the cultural contexts in which it is created and experienced.

The book's first section, "Black Arts 101," takes up the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sterling Brown, Lucille Clifton, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Rita Dove (among others); artist Romare Bearden; dancer Bill T. Jones; and dramatist August Wilson. A second section, "Black Feminist Thinking," provides engaging meditations ranging from "My Grandmother's Hair" and "A Very Short History of Black Women and Food" to essays on the legacies of Toni Cade, Audre Lorde, and June Jordan. The collection's final section, "Talking," includes interviews, a commencement address---"Black Graduation"---and the essay "Africa and the World."

Elizabeth Alexander received a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. from Boston University, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania. She has published four books of poems: The Venus Hottentot (1990); Body of Life (1996); Antebellum Dream Book (2001); and, most recently, American Sublime (2005), which was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Her play, Diva Studies, was produced at the Yale School of Drama. She is presently Professor of American and African American Studies at Yale University.

 

Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color
Click to order via Amazon

Reading level: Ages 9-12
Hardcover: 48 pages
Publisher: Wordsong (September 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1590784561
ISBN-13: 978-1590784563

Grade 7 Up 'Twenty-four sonnets tell the story of Prudence Crandall and her efforts to educate young African-American women in Canterbury, CT, 1833-1834. The school began as a boarding school for white girls; when two black women inquired about taking classes and Crandall agreed, the townspeople withdrew their daughters. As she accepted more black students, the town became more vocal in its resistance, poisoning the school water supply, refusing to sell it supplies, and charging Miss Crandall and others with a variety of "crimes." The sonnet format is challenging but compelling. Each poem addresses an individual aspect of the story; therefore, the tone and cadence change depending upon the person speaking or the event being depicted. The introduction gives essential information, but readers with no background will still need help understanding the political, social, and historical context. Cooper's pastel mixed-media illustrations sometimes illuminate the poems, but at other times seem solely decorative. His portraits for "Tao of the Trial" and "Miss Ann Eliza Hammond" are powerfully rendered, while the nature scenes add little to the poetic experience. The art's sketchiness, however, does suit the poetic form. There are empty spaces in the pictures just as the language of the poetry leaves openness for readers' interpretation. A heartfelt, unusual presentation, this book rewards patient readers. 'Copyright ' Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Venus Hottentot Click to order via Amazon Paperback: 64 pages Publisher: Graywolf Press (January 1, 2004) Language: English ISBN-10: 1555973922 ISBN-13: 978-1555973926 "Readers owe themselves the many pleasures to be found in this book; Elizabeth Alexander creates intellectual magic in poem after poem." --The New York Times Book Review

Antebellum Dream Book
Click to order via Amazon

Paperback: 96 pages
Publisher: Graywolf Press; 1st edition (September 1, 2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 155597354X
ISBN-13: 978-1555973544

After a stellar debut in 1990 and a relative slump six years later with Body of Life, Alexander returns to form (in fact, to a variety of forms) with an aggressively vivid, impressive third collection. Her asymmetrical, confident short poems and sequences encompass, among other things, paintings and sculptures, riots and civil rights marches, childbirth and motherhood, rock concerts and dinner parties, dreams and chocolate bars, and African-American history, from the Middle Passage to Alexander's hometown: "I am from DC," she writes, "therefore responsible./ I am terrified of heights." Alexander's spoken immediacy mixes a personal mode forceful, self-aware, funny with prophetic, visionary lyrics, second- and third-person descriptions of paintings and even a surprisingly effective set of 12 poems in the voice of Muhammad Ali, who advises another boxer to dress "like you the best/ at what you do, like you/ President of the World./ Dress like that." The series "Neonatology" describes Alexander's experience as a new mother; other personal poems describe her dreams, several of which involve Toni Morrison. An anxious poem spoken by a new prisoner ends up dragging its long lines through a cafeteria, where "sin and not sin is scraped off tin trays/ into oversized sinks, all that excess, scraped off and rinsed away." Fans of Alexander's debut, The Venus Hottentot (with its much-anthologized title poem), have been waiting for something this good from her: here it is. (Oct.) Forecast: Alexander's previous books were published by the University of Virginia's Callaloo imprint and Tia Chucha press respectively. The move to well-funded nonprofit Graywolf should mean greater visibility for this title and should set the stage for longer reviews in the likes of Rain Taxi or Boston Review summing up Alexander's career so far.  'Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

 

Body of Life
Click to order via Amazon

Paperback: 85 pages
Publisher: Tia Chucha Press; 1st edition (January 13, 1997)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1882688120
ISBN-13: 978-1882688128

"She continues to fashion crisp, clean, occasionally elliptical poems that demand intelligent input from readers....Graceful elegance and easy musicality still prevail...amid poems of personal experience that manage to avoid being nauseatingly insular, and poems about historical events that reveal a judicious use of detail."  --Washington Post Book World, 02/12/1997

 

American Sublime
Click to order via Amazon

Paperback: 96 pages
Publisher: Graywolf Press (September 22, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1555974325
ISBN-13: 978-1555974329

With a scholarly grasp of personal, political, and private histories, Alexander's newest collection examines the African American experience, particularly during the nineteenth century, in poems about ancestry, language, religion, poetry, and art. The "Amistad" cycle is a potent account of the slave-ship rebellion and the kidnapped Africans' subsequent imprisonment. In a manner reminiscent of Kurosawa's film Rashomon, Alexander adroitly retells events from different points of view with a dramatic voice and carefully selected details. The "Amistad" poems are skillfully linked to persona and personal poems that reflect modern African American experiences, from being singled out in school, as in "Tina Green," to carefully responding to white authority figures, in "Smile." Alexander has a musical voice that shifts from jazz-quick to bluesy to soulful lamentation. Nowhere is this more evident than in the incredible poem "Notes From." Although many poems in the "Ars Poetica" sequence seem less cohesive, less melodious, and at times less poignant, the collection as a whole is a powerful contribution to American poetry. 'Janet St. John, Copyright  --American Library Association. All rights reserved

 

American Blue: Selected Poems
Click to order via Amazon

Paperback: 144 pages
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books (April 27, 2006)
ISBN-10: 1852247304
ISBN-13: 978-1852247300
Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches

Elizabeth Alexander is a leading American poet whose work has been inspired by a wide range of influence, from history, literature, art and music to the 'rich infinity' of the African-American experience. Her's is a vital and vivid poetic voice on race, gender, politics and motherhood. "American Blue" is her first British publication. Many of her poems bring history alive and singing into the present in highly musical, sharply contemporary narratives, which use many different forms and voices to cover subjects ranging from slave rebellions, the Civil Rights movement, Muhammed Ali and Toni Morrison to the lives of jazz musicians and the 'Venus Hottentot', a 19th-century African woman exhibited at carnivals. 'Alexander has an instinct for turning her profound cultural vision into one that illuminates universal experience.' - Clarence Major. 'In narratives sweetened by the lyric pulse and pierced through by felicitous turns of irony, Alexander chronicles the world of "black and tan". Her poems bristle with the irresistible quality of a world seen fresh. Race is present in her poems in the way that sex, class, age, even weather are present in all of our lives' - Rita Dove, "Washington Post." 'Alexander is an unusual thing, a sensualist of history, a romanticist of race. She weaves biography, history, experience, pop culture and dream. Her poems make the public and private dance together' - "Chicago Tribune." 'Alexander uses exquisite care and delicacy to explore turbulent times and feelings, Bravo!'
--Ntozake Shange

 

The Black Interior
Click to order via Amazon

Paperback: 223 pages
Publisher: Graywolf Press; 1st edition (January 1, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1555973930
ISBN-13: 978-1555973933
Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches

"The Black Interior, a critical look at some of black America's most influential cultural voices, may be another such masterpiece....Best known for her poetry, it may be that poet's lyricism and eye for nuance that makes this new work so compelling." 'SAVOY

In The Black Interior, poet Elizabeth Alexander explores a wide spectrum of contemporary African American artistic life through literature, paintings, film, and popular media, and discusses its place in current culture. She examines the vital role of such heavyweight literary figures as Gwendolyn Brooks, Michael Harper, and Langston Hughes, as well as lesser known, yet vibrant, new creative voices. She offers a reconsideration of 'afro-outr' painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, the concept of 'race-pride' in Jet magazine, and her take on Denzel Washington's career as a complex black male icon in a post-affirmative action era. Also available is Alexander's much-heralded essay on Rodney King, Emmett Till, and the collective memory of racial violence.

 

Related Links

http://www.elizabethalexander.net