Inaugural Poetry.2

I'm not sure that having a poet compose a poem for the inauguration is such a bad idea (I actually think it's sort of a wonderful idea, with the potential to both encourage Americans toward patriotism and reintegrate poetry and the public [although, granted, it is risky and poems composed for particular events are not always good ones]). This Wall Street Journal article gives an interesting (although necessarily short) history of inaugural poets and some insight into Obama's choice, with a caution against narrowness in inaugural poetry (and presumably in this article he is talking about narrowness of race, class, and gender as opposed to national narrowness). But really, the author's discussion of narrowness as something to be avoided raises the question of whether or not patriotic political poetry is even possible in Tocqueville's democratic age of globalization. Poetry composed for a particular national event relies on national differences (rather than, for instance, just talking about our humanity). It seems that national distinctiveness as something worth preserving. Poetry may, in fact, be an important part of praising and preserving particularity over sameness.