Poetry Is Not Democracy's Ornament but Its Pillar
Banning books and telling teachers what they can't teach attacks free speech at the root, just like censoring the news; who a collective is and what it values takes shape entirely through language — art is democracy's infrastructure, not its poster.
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The poet went to the scene instead of writing reflections
Rukeyser was not a poet who stayed in her study. At 19, while studying at Vassar, she felt she had to go south to sit in on the Scottsboro trial — staying at school simply wasn't an option; in 1936 she went to Spain to see the anti-Olympics mounted against the Berlin Games, and arrived just as the Spanish Civil War broke out; she also went to West Virginia to write about the Hawks Nest mine disaster — Union Carbide dug tunnels without wet drilling and without giving workers protective gear, the workers were mostly African American, and nearly all of them died of silicosis, which Alexander says may be the largest corporate industrial accident in American history. The conclusion: writing lets more people know what happened, and connects people of different identities on shared human experience.
— Elizabeth AlexanderArt is democracy's pillar, not its illustration
She breaks democracy down into a question of language: who a collective is, what it values, which voices it contains — all of it takes shape through language, so without language there is no collective. When we talk about free speech we always fixate on journalism, but artists being censored, books being banned, teachers being told what they may teach — that moves the same foundation. Her wording is hard: art is not democracy's explanatory diagram, art is itself part of democracy — one of its pillars. And poetry doesn't just wave a flag for values; it is the thing itself. To judge whether a democracy is healthy, look at whether art can still live in an unfettered space.
— Elizabeth AlexanderClose reading is critical thinking, and it can be taught
She describes close reading very plainly: a method, a practice, anyone can learn it, and its other name is critical thinking. Its uses aren't limited to poetry — you use it reading the newspaper, reading the propaganda around you, whether that propaganda comes from above or from advertising and very, very powerful culture. Figuring out how others are working on you is a good thing. And in America many people are nervous about poetry, feeling they're ‘not supposed to understand it’; her method is concrete: drop your shoulders, read it again, don't just read it on the page, read it aloud, then you read it to me — the same poem in a different person's voice, and you hear something different every time.
— Elizabeth AlexanderMisnaming people is an anti-democratic weapon
She says one of the most powerful weapons against democracy is misnaming people, calling them by the wrong name. In America there's a saying, calling people out of their names, which means flattening people, using insulting labels, even smearing the behaviour of an entire people as a whole — this is abuse of language, its purpose is to wound and divide, and it is coming from the highest levels of government. She stresses one thing in particular: it has real consequences. Conversely, naming things precisely, saying what you mean, saying who you are, and catching what others say — that itself is the capacity democracy needs.
— Elizabeth AlexanderGrief has to be put into language before you can hold it
Her husband Fikre died 14 years ago. She wrote a memoir shortly after his death, which surprised even her — she had never imagined writing one or showing it to anyone; it was more a way of landing, of knowing what she was going through: too overwhelming, too unprecedented, and turning some of it into language helped her name the feeling. Writing about him years later was different in kind, became a responsibility: this person was her ‘my person’, who lived a brave, extraordinary, beautiful life and left hundreds of paintings, now shown in museums and galleries. She is wary of herself too: she hopes she isn't wringing this experience dry.
— Elizabeth AlexanderWriting poetry throws away far more than it keeps
She doesn't start a poem from ‘I want to write a poem about X’ but from a word, an image, a phrase that is ringing there, and she can't say why, so she writes it down again and again. She has a day job — almost all poets do — so the real question is: while you're busy with something else, where do you put the thought. Fragments accumulate slowly, and when you have time to sit down, you ask which piece is still vibrating, still alive. How much do you write versus throw away? Her answer is one word: Most. A serious writer throws away many times what they keep, and that takes a little courage — keep writing even when it's wrong. What really excites her is the editing stage, because ‘the beast is there’, the shape is already visible.
— Elizabeth AlexanderThe cost of college is a problem; learning is not
She pushes back directly on the claim that the humanities have no prospects: critical thinking, close reading, extracting meaning from complex texts, communicating persuasively, imagining other people's lives, understanding multiple cultures — these are capacities useful in any career. She doesn't deny that the cost of higher education is a real problem that really needs solving, but she puts her emphasis elsewhere: what's more worrying is the attack on the university itself, interference in its mission, and the loud repetition of the claim that ‘the university is not a valuable thing’. Her last line is sharp: creating an undereducated populace serves another purpose.
— Elizabeth AlexanderThose who cannot read are the easiest to control
‘free people read freely’ is a line from the poet and librarian Tracie D. Hall, and Alexander says she borrows it all day long. She reads those five words out of the African American tradition: under slavery, it was a crime for Black people to learn to read and write, and a crime for a free white person to teach them — what was being controlled was not text but people. So the line holds two halves: free people read freely, and, free people are meant to read. If a person cannot read, cannot access a mass of information, they cannot understand their own life, and so lose the capacity to act on an understanding of how outside forces work on them. Where literacy is taken away, there is only one logic: this is how you are easier to control.
— Elizabeth AlexanderIn their own words · checked verbatim
In the day, I would be reminded of those men and women, brave, setting up signals across vast distances, considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
Elizabeth Alexander7:52
It's not an illustration of democracy, that the arts are, in fact, one of the pillars of democracy.
Elizabeth Alexander13:50
And sometimes that's propaganda from on high, and sometimes that's the propaganda of advertising or very, very strong culture. It's good to understand how you're being worked on.
Elizabeth Alexander33:37
One of the most potent weapons of anti-democracy is misnaming of people.
Elizabeth Alexander42:37
It just came to me as a way to feel grounded and to know what I was experiencing, because it was so overwhelming and so unprecedented that bringing some things into language just helped me name what I was feeling.
Elizabeth Alexander47:58
I think most serious writers, I'm almost certain, throw away many times more than they keep.
Elizabeth Alexander57:30
I mean, that doesn't mean that there are not serious issues about the cost of higher education that really, really do need to be addressed, but there ain't all that much that's broke about the learning.
Elizabeth Alexander1:02:17
When literacy is denied, you think you can control them.
Elizabeth Alexander1:04:50
Figures
| Rukeyser's age when she went south to sit in on the Scottsboro trial | 19 | 3:59 |
| Year Rukeyser wrote “Poem”, the poem the book title comes from | 1967 | 7:52 |
| Year Elizabeth Alexander read a poem at Obama's inauguration | 2009 | 1:16 |
| Typical print run of a poetry collection when she began writing in the late 1980s | 500 copies | 11:01 |
| Syllables and feet in a line of iambic pentameter | ten syllables, five feet | 34:38 |
| Years since her husband Fikre died | 14 years | 47:58 |
| Length of her tenure as president of the Mellon Foundation | eight and a half years | 1:01:07 |
| The Mellon Foundation's standing among US funders of arts, culture, the humanities and higher education, libraries and archives | the largest funder | 59:55 |
Glossary
- close reading
- A method of analysing word by word, line by line, the diction, line breaks and structure; Alexander says its other name is critical thinking
- Ars Poetica
- A poem on the subject of how to write poetry; she uses it to explore the craft of life itself
- Hawks Nest mine disaster
- Union Carbide dug tunnels in West Virginia without wet drilling and without issuing protective gear; nearly all the workers died of silicosis
- Mellon Foundation
- The largest funder in the United States in the fields of arts, culture, the humanities and higher education; Alexander is its president
- free people read freely
- A line from Tracie D. Hall that Alexander often quotes; she points out it also contains ‘free people are meant to read’
How to listen
Founders, investors and anyone who cares about public expression, education and content creation — and anyone who writes for the long haul.
The opening poker story in Las Vegas (0:00–1:16) is unrelated to the topic and can be skipped.