The White House held an "Evening of Poetry, Music and the Spoken Word" in 2009, to celebrate and explore the wonderful and rich American poetry culture. Performances ranged from jazz by Elew and Esperanza Spalding, to spoken word by Mayda del Valle, an artist who has toured extensively and whose work has helped to raise the bar in poetry circles all over the world. James Earl Jones performed Othello, and Brave New Voices” slam champion Jamaica Osorio performs her spoken word, "Kumulipo". Some of the videos are below. For the rest of the videos please visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/video.
