Signals Across Vast Distances : Essays and Tales

A call to courage and connection from prize-winning poet and champion for the arts and humanities

“We send signals across vast distances, hoping to connect.” In luminous prose, Elizabeth Alexander shows how hope offers resources–life wisdom, historical perspective, poetry and art–to embolden us to “reach beyond ourselves.” Her close readings of visionary poets reveal how poetry and art can sustain us. Her stories of connection–as a daughter, wife, widow and mother; as an aspiring dancer; on the dais at President Obama’s inauguration; in the hospital with her son–deeply move us. Shining a light on America’s painful history of inequity, Alexander calls for a reckoning of centuries of injustice. She asks, what will we each do to make the dream of freedom, for everyone, real? Every page charges us to recognise the abundant resources we carry within ourselves: language, history, community, family, our bodies, our stories, love itself. Signals Across Vast Distances empowers us–in Alexander’s closing words–to lead with love.