Poetry in the House - the White House

Poetry in the White House: the new look of a new administration is to care about the spoken word. I knew things were looking good when it turned out that our new President wrote poetry in college. And that he writes his own speeches. That hasn't happened practically since Lincoln.

So I wasn't entirely surprised to read today in the Washington Post that last night the East Room was the venue for a poetry jam. As the Post said, while it wasn't technically a poetry slam, "the spoken-word evening ... did showcase precisely what the best poetry slammers do: Bring their verse to life so that the poem becomes a performance, recited in a rhythm that is almost sung, allowing the speaker to ride words to the deepest valleys of emotion and then scale verbal heights."

And you know what I like even better? Apparently, it was all Michelle's idea. President Obama introduced her as his poet. I'm a happy American today.