Amanda Gorman

My sister Jane and I were mesmerized audience members when I first "met" Amanda Gorman on November 11, 2019 at a Together Rising event in NYC at The Town Hall.
She is young, charismatic, passionate, intelligent (Harvard, Class of 2020), and tremendously talented. She is the Inaugural Youth Poet Laureate of the United States and she can now add Inaugural Poet of 2021 to her extensive resume. Amanda is a wordsmith activist!
From a pool of over 20,000 applicants she was offered a position as a NYT contributor with college students and recent graduates as her audience.
She is the face of Prada.
She has  a TED-Ed Student Talk.
Her long term goal? President 2036.
Watching her perform her works is the literal definition of "poetry in motion."
If you missed her poem at the Presidential Inauguration yesterday, never fear, I have linked it below. I urge you to check out ALL of her spoken word poems. Vibrant. Electric. Magical. ALL the adjectives. She is a force to be reckoned with.
Where else can you find her?
She wrote the forward for the book "Vital Voices: 100 Women Using Their Power to Empower."
She has written her first children's book, "Change Sings" which will be released on September 21, 2021.
She is also releasing a book of poems.
​xo

---

​The Hill We Climb
Amanda Gorman

When day comes,
we ask ourselves
where can we find light
in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade,
we’ve braved the belly of the beast.
We’ve learned that quiet
isn’t always peace.
And the norms and notions
of what “just is”
isn’t always just-ice.

And yet, the dawn is ours
before we knew it.
Somehow we do it.
Somehow we’ve weathered
and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken,
but simply unfinished.

We, the successors of a country
and a time
where a skinny black girl
descended from slaves
and raised
by a single mother
can dream
of becoming president
only to find herself
reciting for one.

And yes, we are
far from polished,
far from pristine,
but that doesn’t mean
we are striving to form
a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge
our union with purpose.
To compose
a country committed
to all cultures,
colors,
characters,
and conditions
of man.

And so we lift our gazes
not to what stands between us,
but what stands before us.
We close the divide
because we know
to put our future first,
we must first
put our differences aside.

We lay down
our arms
so we can reach out
our arms
to one another.
We seek harm to none
and harmony for all.

Let the globe,
if nothing else,
say this is true.
That even as we grieved,
we grew.
That even as we hurt,
we hoped.
That even as we tired,
we tried
that we’ll forever be tied
together
victorious.

Not because
we will never again
know defeat,
but because
we will never again
sow division.

Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit
under their own vine and fig tree
and no one shall make them afraid.
If we’re to live up to our own time,
then victory won’t lie in the blade,
but in all the bridges we’ve made.
That
is the promise to glade,
the hill we climb
if only we dare it.
Because being American
is more than a pride
we inherit.
It’s the past
we step into
and how
we repair it.
We’ve seen a force
that would shatter our nation
rather than share it.
Would destroy our country
if it meant delaying democracy.
And this effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy
can be periodically delayed,
it can never be permanently defeated.

In this truth,
in this faith
we trust
for while
we have our eyes
on the future,
history
has its eyes on us.

This is the era
of just redemption.
We feared it
at its inception.
We did not feel prepared
to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour,
but within it,
we found the power
to author a new chapter,
to offer hope and laughter
to ourselves
so while once we asked,
how could we possibly
prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert,
how could catastrophe possibly
prevail over us?

We will not
march back
to what was,
but move
to what shall be
a country
that is bruised,
but whole,
benevolent,
but bold,
fierce,
and free.

We will not
be turned around
or interrupted
by intimidation
because we know
our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance
of the next generation.
Our blunders
become their burdens.
But one thing is certain,
if we merge mercy with might
and might with right,
then love
becomes our legacy
and change
our children’s birthright.

So let us leave behind
a country better than
the one we were left.
With every breath
from my bronze-pounded chest
we will raise this wounded world
into a wondrous one.
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the West.
We will rise from the wind-swept Northeast
where our forefathers first realized revolution.
We will rise from the lake rimmed cities of the Midwestern states.
We will rise from the sun-baked South.
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover
in every known nook of our nation,
in every corner called our country
our people diverse and beautiful
will emerge battered and beautiful.

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.
https://youtu.be/hjKDW7eE3U4