ELIZABETH ALEXANDER AT PENN STATE

I first heard Elizabeth Alexander read nearly a quarter of a century ago, and we've run into each other often in the years since. (Though somehow never in our mutual home town, D.C.) -- We were on a great panel together at the Paul Laurence Dunbar conference at Stanford.

This year Elizabeth was the honoree of Penn State's annual Emily Dickinson lecture/reading. My students paid her the highest compliment. They told me they would have gone to the reading even if I hadn't required them to.