Poetry for millions.

And who is now the poet in red? The wondered many millions of viewers for Obama's inauguration. It was Elizabeth Alexander, for 20 years with Obama friends. The professor and poet Anna Hoben is currently studying at Yale "Black Culture" - a lesson in Obamania.

 

In August 2008 I arrived in New Haven in a small town in Connecticut in the northeastern United States. Here is the famous Yale University, where I studied for a year, the Department of African American Studies.

The first day: We are a total of five new students in the doctoral program, each will receive an immediate "Adviser" allocated. Elizabeth Alexander is my mentor - not just a professor, but also a poet, for the prestigious Pulitzerpreis was nominated. I register for a course at her: "Freedom and Identity in Black Culture."

Between the beginning of the semester in September and the election on the fourth day of November, in my department is hardly any other issue than Barack Obama. Every conversation between colleagues on the floor, any discussion in the seminar room, sooner or later leads to him. An exciting time in the U.S. African American Studies to make, it can hardly enter.

The enthusiasm is me. In November, I am on the campus at the public viewing the election night. Once Obama as the winner is announced, the students storming out of their homes, run in the Americas wrapped johlend flags on the campus.

Moments of great emotion

The next morning I sit, still somewhat sleepy, in Elizabeth Alexander's course. Your semester program is tight, a book every week or two, an overview of the history of blacks in America from the beginnings of slavery to the present. On the reading list is also Obama's autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," in German translation of "An American Dream: The story of my family."

African American Studies

Afro-American Studies (African American Studies) as an academic subject, there is only since the late sixties? a reaction to the Black Power movement. We wanted to give students the opportunity scientifically to fathom what it means to be black and Americans to be. Yale was a pioneer, and offered the first university in 1978 as a Master degree in Afroamerikanischen studies.

On the day after the election is unlike anything else, we sit in the chair circle, do not rush through the usual exchange of lecture and discussion. Elizabeth Alexander is not so quick-witted as usual, it is emotional. The students? 80 percent are black? tell how they have experienced the election. I can only imagine what this moment means to them, for their parents, their grandparents.

One student tells of his two great uncles who were indicted in Baltimore, a White kill to have. They were hanged? and they were innocent, as subsequently proved. Elizabeth Alexander tells the story of her great-grandfather, who was born as a slave. And of old black people, for the first time in her life have gone on the election, because for the first time they felt that their voice means something.

"I want to remember every detail"

I realize how few generations between then and now is how little time has passed since the Constitution of the United States than blacks to exactly three-fifths human defined - in a notorious Additional Articles of the treatment of slaves in the electoral regulated.

Then the 20th January 2009. 12:26 clock: the 44th President of the United States has just ended his inaugural speech. My professor Elizabeth Alexander enters the stage in front of the Capitol in Washington. She looks left, right, says a few seconds nothing, just watching. "I want to absorb everything that day, later I can remember every detail," she us students a few days earlier.

When Alexander started to speak, it will be a blow to the poet Most often in the world. Nearly two million in the U.S. capital, but millions in the living rooms, in front of the televisions in the world.

The election of Barack Obama for President of the United States is in two respects a revolution. Obama is the first African-Americans in this position. Equally important: With Obama in the Americas will end an era of anti-intellectualism. Unlike George W. Bush appreciates Obama science and the intellectual life, he loves words and is a friend of the literature.

President of poetry in the luggage

One could say that Obama is himself a writer. His autobiography is well-crafted literature, as a student, he has tried with poems, his speeches are poetic, and recently he was with a volume of poetry of the Caribbean poet and Nobel laureate Derek Walcott spotted under the arm.

PERSONAL

Since September Hoben Anna studied at Yale, their home is on Lake Constance, their subjects are English and German. The thesis she writes about the importance of race and skin color in the U.S. election campaign. This is also the subject of their favorite teacher at the American elite university, Elizabeth Alexander.

A politician, with the poetry itself around, even like this can inspire? Obama asked Elizabeth Alexander, for his inauguration, a poem to write and submit. For nearly two decades, the two friends, when she taught at the University of Chicago, lived in the same district. He could have no better choice.

In her last semester course Elizabeth Alexander quoted the writer Toni Morrison: "I want to make art that is politically and beautiful." Alexander's inauguration poem "Praise Song for the Day" speaks clearly the history of African-Americans suffering in the exploitation of blacks. Then it is about hope for America in these difficult times, to a fresh start to interpersonal encounters, multiculturalism and community.

The language of the poem is nice and clear, and every day? as I see it as a student from Alexander know their seminars. What Morrison, the first African-American Literature Nobel Prize winner, has made Elizabeth Alexander is with her poem for Obama succeeded.