Poet, essayist, playwright, and teacher, Elizabeth Alexander was born in 1962 in Harlem, New York, and was raised in Washington, D.C. As a child she studied ballet at St. Mark's Dance School at St. Mark's Episcopal Church and attended Sidwell Friends School. She has a B.A. from Yale University, a M.A. from Boston College, where she studied with Caribbean poet Derek Walcott, and a Ph.D. In English from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of six poetry collections, VENUS HOTTENTOT ( Graywolf Press, 1990), BODY OF LIFE (Tia Chucha Press, 1997), ANTEBELLUM DREAM BOOK (Graywolf Press, 2001), AMERICAN SUBLIME (Graywolf Press, 2005), MISS CRANDALL'S SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES AND LITTLE MISSES OF COLOR (with Marilyn Nelson, Front Street Press, 2007), and CRAVE RADIANCE: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS 1990-2010 (Graywolf Press, 2010), winner of the 2011 Paterson Poetry Prize.

Currently she is chair of the African American Studies Department at Yale University. She says, "Poems remain mysteries to me, even if I have written them, even if I lived with them for a very long time."

Her poem written for President Obama's inauguration displays her gift at the height of her powers combining the personal and political, the particular and the universal to potent and memorable effect.

A Poem for Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguration

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other's
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what's on the other side.

I know there's something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.