It is notoriously difficult to define an American ethos in literature. When I visited Ireland last spring, pictures of Seamus Heaney were everywhere, and the role of poets in defining the social and political course of the nation was clear. Literature in America, though, is often cast aside, placed at the periphery of our consciousness. Ever since Ralph Waldo Emerson’s call in the 1800s for a definitively American national literature, authors have tried—and, by default, failed—to capture a consciousness that truly represents our nation. The challenge of a vast and pluralist society is that we often seem to have no definitive national culture, and our lack of a universal literature is a testament to this challenge.

What we often forget, though, is that literature takes many forms. While no novel necessarily captures the “great American” spirit—perhaps because there is no such spirit to be captured—I think we ought to remind ourselves that the story Obama told in his nomination speech was literary, not political, in nature. When Obama said that “only in America” can a white farm girl and an African exchange student father a boy who grows up to be president, he told the story of his own experience within the national ethos, a story of hope and change that provides a narrative foundation for a particular set of policies. He was writing a national poem, a song of himself that fit the moment in history that spawned it.

I think it is important to pay attention to what Elizabeth Alexander has to say this weekend, if for no other reason than to remind ourselves that perhaps we can, after all, capture America in literature. In the 20th century, poetry has become ever more abstract and personal, ever more difficult to identify with. But this need not be the case. Now, as our news is plagued by incomprehensible macroeconomic worries, and as we turn away by necessity from the materialism that pervades American culture, perhaps poetry is exactly what we need to get by.