In case you haven’t noticed, this is a big weekend for commencement ceremonies. So was last weekend, when poet Elizabeth Alexander spoke at the College of St. Benedict's graduation. More about her in a few paragraphs.

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Erma Vizenor, chairwoman of the White Earth Tribal Council, are two of the busiest speakers in Minnesota starting today.

Vizenor, a Minnesota State University Moorhead alumna, addresses her alma mater’s graduates this morning. Then she heads to the Twin Cities to speak tonight to graduates of the U’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences.    

Klobuchar has a longer break between appearances. She speaks Saturday to graduates of the Minnesota of Minnesota’s law school and Monday to grads of the Hubert Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs.

Collecting commencement speeches
I’ve asked colleges and universities to send me keynote commencement speeches in various formats to share with readers. The latest speech to arrive is video of Alexander, who wrote the poem for President Obama's inauguration. The first was Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s address at Augsburg College. 

I urge you to watch Alexander’s speech (starting at minute No. 34; ending at No. 53). The Yale University professor eloquently captures a poet’s sense of the world as well as her hopes for the next generation and what she learned from her elders. I now understand why she didn’t want to provide a written text.

Even so, here are a few excerpts:

“My advertised topic is creativity and motivating leadership. And please know I will address that topic but sometimes obliquely, in the fashion of a poet. My own creativity is best measured in my work as a poet and that is how we do things — always looking for a surprising angle that moves us toward revelation, large and small. I’ve thought also about how the difficult work of searching for the absolute best word and then making music from it — how that process has something to offer to those of you who are not making lives as artists.”

The most “light-filled words” came from her grandmother, reared in the segregated South of the early 20th century.

“... In the face of racist words and deeds (she) would say calmly, ‘Isn’t it a pity they are so very limited?’ And when I, as a young woman, told her of racist affronts historical and present, she would rhetorically ask, ‘What does his or her ignorance have to do with you? Their ignorance has nothing to do with you.’ Move quickly past the inevitable slights we all face in the name of various ignorances, and do not let the toxins take residence in your psyche. Concentrate instead on how to be just and compassionate and humble.”

To grads: “Speak up and be courageous. Gloria Steinem prescribes that people commit one outrageous act every day. I revise that to say one courageous act a day — be it extending an act of kindness, speaking up when the butterflies in our stomach say no, giving half of your metaphorical sandwich to someone who does not have one, admitting when you’ve been wrong, pushing past where your knowledge stops — through the discomfort of unknowing.”