Amanda Gorman's "The Hill We Climb"
Reflecting on our prolific national youth poet laureate and her inaugural poem
She is an icon. She is a legend. She is the moment.
Amanda Gorman
I don’t know about you, but if you’re been paying attention to any small and big shifts in the world, you may have noticed America. Could have been for a number of reasons, but hopefully you were brought here or held here by the brilliant Amanda Gorman and her poem for Joe Biden’s inauguration. After the last four years of fumes - that poem felt like more than a breath of fresh air, more like gust of LIFE thrust through my senses striking my heart and aligning the nation’s soul all at once. I just do not have the words — only my gratitude and rising resolve and a plea for you to join in reflecting in our new national poet laureate’s gift. Here is where we can read the full text of the poem + and here’s where we can get it. Here is the moment of moments:
Everything jumps out, but for brevity I will pull out what’s magnetizing my planet-saving eyes:
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 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?
- Amanda Gorman, The Hill We Climb
May we all honor Amanda Gorman by following, sharing, and learning from her words. Here’s her sagacious TED talk: Using your voice is a political choice
OK so for some bonuses, here’s the text of another Amanda Gorman poem, In This Place: An American Lyric.
Here is “Earthrise”, a poem Amanda Gorman did for The Climate Reality Project — Al Gore’s climate communications nonprofit I’m a member of which I highly recommend you consider looking into:
Finally I’ll leave you with Amanda Gorman reading her poem, The Miracle of Morning