“This night to shall pass and when it does this 2020 class will not just navigate a new world, together we will build a better one…today we don’t burst into a new world, we begin it.”
This was a quote in Amanda Gorman’s poem to her fellow 2020 graduates. Her beautifully articulated poem was a beacon of light to graduates everywhere. Her poem replaced fears about graduating in a pandemic with the hope to what the graduates could accomplish.
According to her profile on Poets.org, Gorman was born and raised in Los Angeles California and graduated from Harvard in 2020. Before graduating Harvard, Gorman had already published a book of poetry, Food is Not Enough, and became the first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate.
Shortly after graduating college, she became the youngest poet to speak at a presidential inauguration, reading “The Hill We Climb” at President Joe Bidens inauguration. Gorman was invited by Jill Biden after she heard the young poet read a poem at the Library of Congress.
As she recited her poem on the day of the inauguration, just like in her poem to graduates, she acknowledged the fears of division while stressing that unity can be within the country’s reach as long as people keep trying to make it better.
While Gorman has done so many incredible things in the first 24 years of her life, what I find to be one of the most impressive things about her is her ability to respond to a crisis. From capital riots to school shootings, Gorman has this incredible power to both acknowledge and comfort the feelings of a nation.
In an interview with CNBC, Gorman said she was halfway through writing her poem for the inauguration when news broke of the Jan. 6, capital riots.
“If we’re to live up to our own time their victory won’t lie in the blade but the bridges we have made…while democracy can be periodically delayed it can never be permanently defeated …how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us.” These are just a few of the incredible lines that demonstrate the power in her poem, responding to the events that had the country in shock.
I watched her read this poem over and over, each time being filled with so much hope and also a desire to be more expressive in my own writing.
Gorman has published three books: Call Us What We Carry, Change Sings, The Hill We Climb. All three were #1 New York Times bestsellers.
For anyone interested in poetry, all three are must-reads. “Call Us What We Carry” was the first book of poetry that I read outside of a class assignment and I absolutely loved it. I still find myself picking it up to flip through the poems on days that I’m looking for a little hope or some writing inspiration.
Overall, Gorman is an incredibly talented person who at a very young age has already accomplished incredible things by using her poetry prowess to bring attention to issues of feminism, race, marginalizatio and more.