Biden’s inauguration poet, Amanda Gorman, is one of the most insightful persons I have listened to. This Lester Holt interview shows her depth. Her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” is a masterpiece.
Amanda Gorman, insightful beyond her years
I was listening to the inauguration in the background. Then there was this mesmerizing oratory. I looked up and saw this young tiny woman on the huge podium. The depth of her prose/poetry was beyond her apparent age. And then I researched her. And in fact, her poem’s insightfulness and depth were beyond her age, 23 years old.
The last verse was powerful figuratively and literally.
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it
Amanda Gorman was subsequently interviewed by NBC’s Lester Holt. An answer to one of his questions was even more insightful than her poem. I showed me her depth was deeper than I had heard on inauguration dayu.
“There was this moment of just kind of horror,” Amanda Gorman said. “And disgust of what was happening. But then I also felt an enormous responsibility to say, okay this is occurring. What am I going to do about it and even more importantly what am I going to write about it in this moment, in time? And so I definitely tried to weave through that type of understanding and reconciliation with this event in the poem. That is to say, I wanted to use the words to re-sanctify a space in a building that had been violated. I wanted to use my word to kind of re-purify this idea of the United States which would seem so tainted via violence.”
Amanda Gorman understands America.