#1. The Hill We Climb
By 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 justice. 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 a union with purpose, to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man.
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, 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 should make them afraid. If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in in all of 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. That would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy, and this effort very nearly succeeded. But while democracy can periodically be delayed, but 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 in 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 can 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 burden. 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 golden hills of the West, we will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution, we will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states, we will rise from the sunbaked 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 the 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.
#2. Provide, Provide
By Robert Frost
The witch that came (the withered hag)
To wash the steps with pail and rag
Was once the beauty Abishag,
The picture pride of Hollywood.
Too many fall from great and good
For you to doubt the likelihood.
Die early and avoid the fate.
Or if predestined to die late,
Make up your mind to die in state.
Make the whole stock exchange your own!
If need be occupy a throne,
Where nobody can call you crone.
Some have relied on what they knew,
Others on being simply true.
What worked for them might work for you.
No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard
Or keeps the end from being hard.
Better to go down dignified
With boughten friendship at your side
Than none at all. Provide, provide!
Buraq says
Depends on how you define what a poem is. Or what poetic language is. Or rhyme or metrical measures.
Anyway, Gorman’s ‘poetry’ swings close enough to rap to cast a shadow. But it’s too busy being clever with language to focus on an emotional core. Gorman is smart, but her poetry suffers from the same thing that most young people suffer from — a complete lack of refined emotional expression.
Robert Frost, on the other hand, is much more disciplined. Trudeau would’ve hated him, if Trudeau could read! Anyways, Frost’s octosyllabic lines could be overlaid on rap rhythms. Rap relies on octosyllabic structures to propel it along, although dumb rap text labours simplistic thoughts to make them sound like they might be distantly related to ‘ideas’. But the young are easily fooled.
I’m old school. Frost is the true poet here.
Lawrence R. Brownlee says
AMANDA GORMAN’S skill with language was very good and her poem was well written, but like all Liberals, she has never read the works of ancient Greek philosophers who agreed that the most important forms of government were:
1. A Monarchy, because the king and queen saw their subjects as their children and treated them with trough love.
2. A Republic, the best of which was the Roman republic, which lasted 400 years, until Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and declared himself King……the first of many bad Caesars [kings].
3, A Democracy. The worst type of government because 51% of the people get to lorded it over the other 49%
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Hugh
Very soon, one of those AI bots will be competing w/ you ?
Hugh Fitzgerald says
I know. I’m lying…in wait.
CogitoErgoSum says
I remember seeing a movie about where, after hearing a composition by Mozart, the Emperor tells the composer it was nice but that there too many notes. I feel the same way about the composition by Gorman. She used too many words. Frosts gets across his idea with fewer words and when I read it I felt a calmness in my soul that I did not get from Gorman. Hers was more of a rap song, a song with no music but still a rap song and rap songs leave me irritated. Maybe the rhyming of words can make for a poem but the rhyming of ideas makes for one that is even better. Frost was able to rhyme ideas as well as words: Gorman simply beat her one idea to death with a bludgeon.
somehistory says
If she took a course in writing, or just sat down and put thoughts on paper for publication, an honest professor or editor, would label her work as “wordy.”
It isn’t a good thing.
She needs to read what she wrote with an open mind….and rewrite some of it; such as “But while democracy can periodically be delayed, but it can never be permanently defeated.”
Leave out the second “but.”
somehistory says
Perhaps it’s because I don’t care for nothingness, but the rapper leaves me wishing I hadn’t bothered.
When I hear “rap” shouting from car radios…and that happens a whole lot more than does a silent radio, or something with which my mind and heart can meet…I am irritated by the nothingness. Often, it’s rude, crude and immoral nothingness, and that is even worse.
Mr. Frost on the other hand, gives me an emotion of having seen this woman, one who was “someone” she wished to be and others appreciated, but who has been tossed aside when she is no longer a beauty.
It brings to mind some who died young, before they could become wrinkled and old and no longer viewed with awe and envy. They left the land of the living still admired and talked about as if they were truly special in ways that ordinary people can never be.
somehistory says
And referencing “Scripture” has no place with the rest of what she wrote. She didn’t apply the verses….it is not meant only that we “envision” but something that is promised….nor say how they fit with her focus on “democracy.”
And “history has its eyes on us.” …such drivel.
She’s a bidenite, evidently, and he gets it all wrong, too.
commonsense says
Amanda Gorman,’s putative poetry is prolix, puerile, sloppily constructed (one example has already been cited by somehistory, above; there is at least one other similar example), and, above all, replete with trite, overused clichés (e.g. ” in the belly of the beast”). It’s excruciating to read such stale, empty, sophomoric drivel. Gorman, though, probably thinks of herself as a trailblazing, luminous member of the Black Literati. Quite sad, really.
deze MN bee says
“One of these is a poem”.
Taking that as a premise then the only valid answer is the following.
If Gorman’s text is poem then Frost’s is not.
If Frost’s text is a poem then Gorman’s is not.
If you argue that Gorman’s text is bad poetry then you would have to accept that Frost’s text is not a poem. A stronger premise would be “Only one of these is a poem”.
If you have a dollar in your left hand and a dollar in your right hand and say “one of these is a dollar” then that premise is true and you are just wasting other people’s time. So by analogy, you might argue that the premise doesn’t exclude the possibility that both may be poems.
I have two eyes; one of them is an eye.
Westman says
One of them reminds me of Obama’s first speech at the Dems national convention. Promises the world and and is later forced to reality by the never-ending drive of human competition.
When speech/writing gets too flowery I check to see if my wallet is safe.
Paul says
Dhimmi Britain
Who weeps for little girls in dhimmi Britain,
Our tribute to these lions of Islam here?
Who cares that in these heroes’ book it’s written
Submit or live perpetually in fear?
Who dares protest this stony-hearted evil?
Who’s there will fight for trembling twelve-year-olds?
How come we’ve all become so weak and feeble
And no one’s bothered what the future holds?
tgusa says
What a downer. Really sad. It must be hard to carry that burden. My ancestors struggled, at times, in America. I I dont whine about those struggles today. Do something with your life instead of being angry about the sins of the past. Sins of the past, yes, there are many and they cant be considered racist. You will find more hatred among differing 9ncompatibe ideologies rater tan race.
Mick says
Shaking a fist at the ageing process, EE Cummings. From memory:
Buffalo Bill’s defunct, who used to ride a water-smooth silver stallion and shoot onetwothreefourfivesixpigeons, just like that.
Jesus Christ, he was a handsome man.
And what do you think of your blue-eyed boy, Mr Death?
For sure the punctuation is wrong.
Beneath the Veil of Consciousness says
Gorman’s poem is impressive (if she were a fourth grader). She’s another example of how our society virtue signals by propping up mediocrity based on one’s skin color. I love the line that includes the phrase, “raised by a single mother.” Beg pardon, where your baby daddy at? Pulling a George Floyd disappearing act or sumptin?
Belladonna Rogers says
Neither holds a candle to “The Swft” or “An Evening of Russian Poetry.”