This is truly wonderful, but I have one question: why couldn't Elizabeth Alexander have read her poem the way she talks here? She talks so beautifully, so fluently, so smoothly, with wit and charm, but she read the poem so flatly. In my previous post, I talked about the lack of oratory in her presentation, and I suspected that few contemporary American poets would be able to be "oratorical" in the way Obama and Lowery were. But EA's speaking on the Colbert show suggests that she could well have presented her poem in an oratorically more satisfying way!