{"id":7047589,"date":"2026-08-25T17:22:38","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T17:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/angelou-and-williams-for-clinton\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T17:22:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T17:22:38","slug":"angelou-and-williams-for-clinton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7047589","title":{"rendered":"Angelou and Williams for Clinton"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"post-body-1423938037488112817\" itemprop=\"description articleBody\">\n<p>[<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jfklibrary.org\/visit-museum\/exhibits\/permanent-exhibits\/the-inauguration-of-john-f-kennedy\">65 years<br \/>\nago Tuesday<\/a>, John F. Kennedy was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.archives.gov\/milestone-documents\/president-john-f-kennedys-inaugural-address\">inaugurated<br \/>\nas President<\/a>. One of the most famous parts of that January 1961 event was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jfklibrary.org\/learn\/about-jfk\/life-of-john-f-kennedy\/fast-facts-john-f-kennedy\/the-gift-outright-by-robert-frost\">Robert<br \/>\nFrost\u2019s powerful poem<\/a>, so this week I\u2019ll AmericanStudy that text<br \/>\nand other occasional poetry from American history. Leading up to a first for<br \/>\nthis blog, a piece of my own creative writing!]<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">On what differentiates Clinton\u2019s two inaugural poets, and a<br \/>\ncrucial connection in their content.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">I\u2019m not going to pretend that Maya Angelou wasn\u2019t already a very,<br \/>\nvery big deal long before she delivered her poem \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/poets.org\/poem\/pulse-morning\">On the Pulse of Morning<\/a>\u201d at<br \/>\nBill Clinton\u2019s first <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OQQThtav41o\">inauguration<br \/>\nin January 1993<\/a>. Indeed, it\u2019s fair to say she had been one of America\u2019s<br \/>\npreeminent writers for at least a quarter-century by then, since the 1969<br \/>\npublication of her first memoir <i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/books\/edition\/I_Know_Why_the_Caged_Bird_Sings\/9vaLDQAAQBAJ?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;printsec=frontcover\">I<br \/>\nKnow Why the Caged Bird Sings<\/a><\/i>. But nonetheless, it was both<br \/>\nsymbolically and nationally significant that the second inaugural poet in our<br \/>\nhistory\u2014and, as I wrote yesterday, the first in more than 30 years; I have to imagine<br \/>\nthat by 1993 it seemed like Robert Frost\u2019s reading in 1961 was just going to be<br \/>\na one-off\u2014was an African American woman. And honestly, it\u2019s the combination of<br \/>\nboth of those sentences and contexts\u2014that Angelou was one of the most important<br \/>\n20<sup>th<\/sup> century Black writers, and that this was still a surprising<br \/>\ninvitation on multiple levels\u2014which makes Clinton\u2019s choice of Angelou to my<br \/>\nmind the single most significant moment of occasional poetry in American<br \/>\nhistory.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"tab-stops: 328.5pt;\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">I hope it\u2019s thus abundantly clear that<br \/>\nI mean no disrespect to Clinton\u2019s second inaugural poet <a href=\"https:\/\/arktimes.com\/entertainment\/ae-feature\/2015\/01\/07\/six-poems-by-miller-williams\">Miller<br \/>\nWilliams<\/a>, who read his poem \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-srv\/national\/longterm\/inaug\/mon\/poem.htm\">Of<br \/>\nHistory and Hope<\/a>\u201d at Clinton\u2019s January 1997 inauguration, when I say that<br \/>\nthe moment was in every sense less significant. Williams was a longtime <a href=\"https:\/\/news.uark.edu\/articles\/26213\/miller-williams-remembered-as-poet-educator-co-founder-of-university-of-arkansas-press\">English<br \/>\nProfessor at the University of Arkansas<\/a> (he joined the department in 1970<br \/>\nand was emeritus until his passing in early 2015), and also co-founded and<br \/>\ndirected for twenty years the University of Arkansas Press. He published a ton<br \/>\nof <a href=\"https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poets\/miller-williams\">his own<br \/>\npoetry<\/a>, translated other poets including Pablo Neruda, and also happens to have<br \/>\nbeen the <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.utexas.edu\/ransomcentermagazine\/2023\/12\/11\/lucinda-williamss-memoir-reveals-deep-connection-with-her-father-poet-miller-williams\/\">father<br \/>\nof Lucinda Williams<\/a>. So this was an impressive figure on many fronts, and<br \/>\none deeply connected to the state of Arkansas that was so foundational in Bill<br \/>\nClinton\u2019s life and story, making Miller a very logical choice for Clinton\u2019s<br \/>\nsecond inaugural poet\u2014but, again, a much less significant one than Maya Angelou<br \/>\n(which likely has a lot to do with why I didn\u2019t know about his inaugural poem until<br \/>\nresearching this series).<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"tab-stops: 328.5pt;\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">But any student of mine, and probably anybody<br \/>\nwho knows me well at all, knows how much I value close reading, textual<br \/>\nanalysis, not letting such contexts dictate too fully how we approach the<br \/>\nevidence in front of us. And when we look at these two inaugural poems, different<br \/>\nas they likewise are in many ways, they have a crucial connection in a core<br \/>\nelement of their content: their visions of American history and its role in our<br \/>\npresent. I used a relevant quote from Angelou\u2019s poem as the epigraph for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomsbury.com\/us\/history-and-hope-in-american-literature-9781442276369\/\">my<br \/>\nfourth book<\/a> (the title of which begins with the same phrase as Williams\u2019s title,<br \/>\n\u201cHistory and Hope\u201d): \u201cHistory, despite its wrenching pain\/Cannot be unlived,<br \/>\nbut if faced\/With courage, need not be lived again.\u201d And very much in<br \/>\nconversation with those lines are the concluding ones in Williams\u2019s poem: \u201cAll<br \/>\nthis in the hands of children, eyes already set\/on a land we can never visit\u2014it<br \/>\nisn\u2019t there yet\u2014\/but looking through their eyes, we can see\/what our long gift<br \/>\nto them may come to be.\/If we can truly remember, they will not forget.\u201d I\u2019d say<br \/>\nwe still desperately need to hear and read both of these poetic works and<br \/>\nvoices in our 21<sup>st<\/sup> century moment. <span style=\"mso-tab-count: 1;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">Last occasional poem tomorrow,<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">Ben<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;\">PS. What do you think? Occasional poetry you\u2019d share?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[65 years ago Tuesday, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as President. One of the most famous parts of that January 1961 event was Robert Frost\u2019s powerful poem, so this week I\u2019ll AmericanStudy that text and other occasional poetry from American history. Leading up to a first for this blog, a piece of my own creative [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[182221,117935,7876],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7047589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","tag-angelou","tag-clinton","tag-williams"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Angelou and Williams for Clinton - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7047589\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Angelou and Williams for Clinton - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[65 years ago Tuesday, John F. 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