Elizabeth Alexander composed and recited "Praise Song for the Day" for President Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration. She is the author of six books of poetry--including American Sublime, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize--and is the first winner of the Jackson Prize for Poetry and a National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim fellow. She is the Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of African American Studies at Yale University.
Praise for Elizabeth Alexander "Elizabeth Alexander creates
intellectual magic in poem after poem."--The New York Times Book
Review
"[Alexander] seems much like Walt Whitman. She sings the American
song."--Maya Angelou
"[A] gorgeous and intimate tribute."--Newsday
"[Elizabeth Alexander] is gifted with an incredible ability to put
words to meter and create profound meaning."--The Root
"A deeply intimate and lyrical portrait."--Essence
"A moving tribute to her late husband's memory and a deeply felt
meditation on loss, love and literature."--Publisher's Weekly
"A radiant book of love's everlastingness and art's infinite
sustenance."--Booklist (starred review)
"Alexander explores tensions inherent in gender and race and
expresses the ambivalence of motherhood in jazz-inflected
tones."--ELLE
"An elegy that records, in hypnotic waves of love and grief."--New
York Times, T Magazine
"Elizabeth Alexander has written a brave and beautiful book about
love and loss-the deep pain that comes with such a loss, and the
redemptive realization that such pain is a small price to pay for
such a love."--Jeannette Walls, New York Times bestselling author
of The Glass Castle
"Elizabeth Alexander is a student, and dare I say, master of the
craft. Her work is inspirational in a way that The Great
Gatsby...is inspirational, in that it just says so much about who
we are."--The Atlantic
"Feel[s] authentic and true."--The Economist
"I just finished THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD by Elizabeth Alexander.
It's a memoir about coping with the death of her husband, and it's
magnificent."-- First Lady Michelle Obama, from an interview in The
Skimm
"In narratives sweetened by the lyric pulse and pierced through by
felicitous turns of irony, Alexander chronicles the world of 'black
and tan.' Her poems bristle with the irresistible quality of a
world seen fresh."--Rita Dove, The Washington Post
"In THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD, Alexander discovers a warmth that will
remind some readers of the deeper truth of grieving: It is a sign
of love."--New York Times Book Review
"It is both raw and exquisitely crafted, mercilessly direct and
sometimes lavishly metaphorical... THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD is, quite
simply, a miracle."--Boston Sunday Globe
"Love - for a marvelous man, for her sons, for the textures and
pleasures of the world - shines on every page of Elizabeth
Alexander's THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. This acutely observed study of
what it means to lose one's beloved is a profound and beautiful
contradiction: a joyous book that faces head-on the deepest grief,
written with art and courage, and with limitless heart." --Mark
Doty
"Professor Alexander is a virtuosic writer and a shrewd analyst of
American letters, a polyglot who moves fluently from essay to
sonnet, from free verse to drama--and in her teaching, traces
equally diverse themes."--Slate
"She shows us how feeding your family and remembering to be aware
of the small details of everyday life are the bedrocks of true
connection. In this book of prose, each page is a poem."--O, The
Oprah Magazine
"The Light of the World is crushing, lovely, painful, and above all
powerful. It is difficult to believe that anyone who has suffered
loss will remain unaffected by this marvelous book."--New York
Journal of Books
"This is a beautifully written, heartrendingly candid account of
the abrupt loss of her husband by the distinguished poet Elizabeth
Alexander. It is a vivid, intensely rendered elegy of a remarkable
man--husband, father, artist, chef. Both a memoir and a portrait of
a marriage, The Light of the World is, as its title suggests, a
bittersweet testament to love and the memory of love, one of the
most compelling memoirs of loss that I have ever read."--Joyce
Carol Oates
"This is a gorgeous love story, written by one of America's
greatest contemporary poets. Graceful in its simplicity, sweeping
in scope, this book is proof that behind the boarded up windows of
America's roiled marriages and ruined affairs, true love still
exists, and where it does exist, it graces the world-and us-with
light and hope. Elizabeth Alexander is a prose writer of deep
talent and affecting skill. With ease, she peels back layer after
layer to show the soft secrets of affection, the kindness, and the
wide open generosity of a full hearted man and talented artist, who
had more love to give in his relatively short lifetime than most of
us will ever know."--James McBride, National Book Award-winning
author of The Good Lord Bird and #1 New York Times bestseller The
Color of Water
"To call this book a riff would underplay its craft and
exactitude."--Chicago Tribune
"THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD is a celebration of life, a portrait of
grief, and a lesson in the healing power of memory."--KMUW
"THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD is as beautiful and moving as a gorgeous
piece of music. The minute I finished it, I longed to read it
again."--Anna Deavere Smith
"With tenderness and fierce poetic precision, [Alexander] realizes
a simple truth: that death only deepens the richness of a life
journey that must push on into the future. A delicate,
existentially elegiac memoir."--Kirkus
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