{"id":832,"date":"2010-10-01T00:01:57","date_gmt":"2010-10-01T04:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2010\/10\/01\/elizabeth-alexander-the-texas-prophet\/"},"modified":"2017-03-21T14:04:57","modified_gmt":"2017-03-21T18:04:57","slug":"elizabeth-alexander-the-texas-prophet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2010\/10\/01\/elizabeth-alexander-the-texas-prophet\/","title":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Alexander, &#8220;The Texas Prophet&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image833\" src=\"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/elizabeth-alexander.jpg\" alt=\"elizabeth-alexander.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><font size=\"2\">I am the Texas Prophet who is now in Baltimore.<br \/>\nGod blesses those that see me and I&#8217;m coming to your town.<br \/>\nI guarantee you without fail a straight and one-way blessing.<br \/>\nI come to bring you luck and by your popular demand.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m bringing Mojo hands for those of you can&#8217;t win for losing.<br \/>\nAll manner of disease is healed. Cash money falls like rain.<br \/>\nIf I were you I would come early. He can&#8217;t stay all night.<br \/>\nThose who know me know I am no money-hungry Prophet.<\/p>\n<p>I am the Texas Prophet who is now in Baltimore.<br \/>\nI&#8217;m bringing good luck talismans and guarantee my work.<br \/>\nKeep looking up keep looking up His help is on the way.<br \/>\nYours in spirit and in love The Prophet John C. Bates.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.powells.com\/partner\/29017\/biblio\/1555975682\"><i>Crave Radiance<\/i> collects twenty years&#8217; worth of poems from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elizabethalexander.net\">Elizabeth Alexander<\/a>, including &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/01\/20\/us\/politics\/20text-poem.html\">Praise Song for the Day<\/a>,&#8221; which she read at the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Up until then, she was perhaps best known as the author of &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/culture\/archive\/2008\/12\/because-it-apos-s-friday-and-elizabeth-alexander-is-great\/6473\/\">The Venus Hottentot<\/a>,&#8221; about which Ta-Nehisi Coates has written, &#8220;I&#8217;m embarrassed to say that I hated this poem when I first read it. But I was young and foolish. I knew better after I read it ten more times&#8230; This is, to my mind, one of the best meditation I&#8217;ve ever read on black women and the loss&#8211;and I guess reclamation&#8211;of control of their physical selves.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Academy of American Poets presents some other poems included in this collection: &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.poets.org\/viewmedia.php\/prmMID\/16188\">Blues<\/a>,&#8221; &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.poets.org\/viewmedia.php\/prmMID\/16187\">Haircut<\/a>,&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.poets.org\/viewmedia.php\/prmMID\/16672\">Ladders<\/a>.&#8221; Alexander&#8217;s own website also features <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elizabethalexander.net\/poems.html\">poems from throughout her career<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am the Texas Prophet who is now in Baltimore. God blesses those that see me and I&#8217;m coming to your town. I guarantee you without fail a straight and one-way blessing. I come to bring you luck and by your popular demand. I&#8217;m bringing Mojo hands for those of you can&#8217;t win for losing. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4198,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions\/4198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}