the young people's professor

This morning I received some thrilling news from my a friend of mine, LaMarr Bruce, a Ph.D. student in American/African American Studies at Yale University. It has been announced that poet Elizabeth Alexander, Chair of Yale's Department of African American Studies, has been commissioned to deliver the Inaugural Poem at Barack Obama's Inauguration Ceremony .When I heard this news, my heart skipped a beat. Professor Alexander will be only the fourth poet in history to read at a Presidential Inauguration, following Robert Frost, Miller Williams, and Maya Angelou.

One of my fondest memories as an undergraduate was participating in the Yale University Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program in the Summer of 2002. During that summer I had the pleasure of serving as Elizabeth's undergraduate research assistant in the Department of English. For the most part all I did that summer was bask in the glow of her iridescent light, and pursue some research on poet Michael Harper for an essay that she was working on at the time.

We've long since fallen out of direct contact, but my memories of my experience with her have always been extremely favorable. Not only was she the first person to introduce me to the work of Melvin Dixon, she was actually the first person to encourage me to think about "performance studies" as a discipline. I'm so very proud of her, and this enormous achievement.

Alexander is the author of four books of poems, including her most recent collection American Sublime, which was one of three finalists for the Pulitizer Prize in 2006. Below is one my favorite poems by Alexander, her now canonical work, "The Venus Hottentot."

Congratulations Liz, if I may.

The Venus Hottentot
by Elizabeth Alexander

1. Cuvier

Science, science, science!
Everything is beautiful

blown up beneath my glass.
Colors dazzle insect wings.

A drop of water swirls
like marble. Ordinary

crumbs become stalactites
set in perfect angles

of geometry I'd though
impossible. Few will

ever see what I see
through this microscope.

Cranial measurements
crowd my notebook pages,

and I am moving closer,
close to how these numbers

signify aspects of
national character.

Her genitalia
will float inside a labeled

picking jar in the Musee
de l'Homme on a shelf

above Broca's brain:
"The Venus Hottentot."

Elegant facts await me.
Small things in this world are mine.


2.
There is unexpected sun today
in London, and the clouds that
most days sift into this cage
where I am working have dispersed.
I am a black cutout against
a captive blue sky, pivoting
nude so the paying audience
can view my naked buttocks.

I am called "Venus Hottentot."
I left Capetown with a promise
of revenue: half the profits
and my passage home: A boon!
Master's brother proposed the trip;
the magistrate granted me leave.
I would return to my family
a duchess, with watered-silk

dresses and money to grow food,
rouge and powders in glass pots,
silver scissors, a lorgnette,
voile and tulle instead of flax,
cerulean blue instead
of indigo. My brother would
devour sugar studded non-
pareils, pale taffy, damask plums.

That was years ago. London's
circuses are florid and filthy,
swarming with cabbage-smelling
citizens who stare and query,
"Is it muscle? bone? or fat?"
My neighbor to the left is
The Sapient Pig, "The Only
Scholar of His Race." He plays

at cards, tells time and fortunes
by scraping his hooves. Behind
me is prince Kar-mi, who arches
like a rubber tree and stares back
at the crowd from under the crook
of his knee. A professional
animal trainer shouts my cues.
There are singing mice here.

"The Ball of Duchess DuBarry":
In the engraving I lurch
toward the belles dames, mad-eyed, and
they swoon. Men in capes and pince-nez
shield them. Tassels dance at my hips.
In this newspaper lithograph
my buttocks are shown swollen
and luminous as a planet.

Monsieur Cuvier investigates
between my legs, poking, prodding,
sure of his hypothesis.
I half expect him to pull silk
scarves from inside me, paper poppies,
then a rabbit! He complains
at my scent and does not think
I comprehend, but I speak

English. I speak Dutch. I speak
a little French as well, and
languages Monsieur Cuvier
will never know have names.
Now I am bitter and now
I am sick. I eat brown bread,
drink rancid broth. I miss good sun,
miss Mother's sadza. My stomach

is frequently queasy from mutton
chops, pale potatoes, blood sausage.
I was certain that this would be
better than farm life. I am
the family entrepreneur!
But there are hours in every day
to conjure my imaginary
daughters, in banana skirts

and ostrich-feather fans.
Since my own genitals are public
I have made other parts private.
In my silence I possess
mouth, larynx, brain, in a single
gesture. I rub my hair
with lanolin, and pose in profile
like a painted Nubian

archer, imagining gold leaf
woven through my hair, and diamonds.
Observe the wordless Odalisque.
I have no forgotten my Xhosa
clicks. My flexible tongue
and healthy mouth bewilder
this man with his rotting teeth.
If he were to let me rise up

from his table, I'd spirit
his knives and cut our his black heart,
seal it with science fluid inside
a bell jar, place it on a low
shelf in a white man's museum
so the whole world could see
it was shriveled and hard,
geometric, deformed, unnatural.