A Nation's Change

In Elizabeth Alexander’s Poem, “Praise song for the day”, Alexander connects the meaning of words with their usage and to what extent words can shape our interactions with the human existence. With this poem is the connection with elevated and intentional language with proportional actions.
In this first stanza, Alexander expresses the meaningless routine of human interaction worded with the banality of routine, much like a social commentary. “Each day we go about our business…catching each other’s eyes or not,”, and “about to speak or speaking” express the unintentional an sporadic manner of interactions, described by strong connotative words such as “bramble”, “thorn”, and “din”. Alexander Intentionally uses these emotionally charged words, for on writing this poem, she has been quoted, “I don’t think themes, I begin with language..but I don’t start with one idea that I wish to express in poetry”.
To contrast the din” of language, Alexander introduces the concept of music, with the line “someone is trying to make music somewhere”, a type of solution to the problem of a meaningless humanity. Introducing the concept of “music”, Alexander reveals insight into the title of the poem “Praise song for the day”. Throughout this poem, Alexander again and again connects the intentional usage of words with a new change, using allusions to struggles throughout history, such as migrants who “picked the…lettuce” and the people in the past who have laid the foundation for our existence, who have “laid the train tracks, raised the bridges”. The new change, or the “music” that Alexander refers to in this poem, appears to be a reference to Obama, the new president, who is defined as a great orator who chooses words intentionally and for a certain connotation. In a seemingly direct reference to Obama’s change to a greater system of governing, Alexander’s closing line “On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp—praise song for waling forward in that light”, is a comment on the positive change Obama will bring to America.