I recall lounging on the sprawling, sunny lawn of the Capital Mall, taking in those resonant words that began “A Rock, A River, A Tree” (words of a senior poet who’d already seen & written much - delivered in a slower, more contemplative cadence, a perhaps less overtly urgent / less emergency-born cry of the soul) that pensively embodied the values & ideals of that ostensibly not-so-distant time. Thinking about this pulls me back into the memory of Maya Angelou’s “ On the Pulse of Morning” (recited January 20, 1993, for President Bill Clinton’s first inauguration: the only inauguration & inaugural poem recitation I’ve managed to catch in person). If the Presidential address is the main course of the occasion, if the inaugural poem is arguably a flavorful dessert - yet the latter complements the former & can serve to codify & encapsulate the day’s gestalt in personal & cultural memory. Such occasional poetry indeed meets a need: what we know & experience requires utterance in lucid language for it to become fully “real” in our shared culture, or even (to a degree) to realize it in our personal awareness. The poised poet’s performance was superb: channeling & articulating the hopes & needs of the moment verbally imagining a way through the morass sketching for us a morality tale whose lesson reads: keep your appointment with destiny, at this turning-point hinge in collective history.

The very nature & special excellence of this contemporary stream of writing is that it’s primarily a performative form. It was (so to speak) rap for a politically thoughtful intelligentsia: hip-hop’s verbal stylings with a spiritual vision & a humanitarian core. One thing I especially like is how fully her writing integrates the qualities & strengths & techniques of rap / hip-hop / spoken word traditions with a well-read / wide-viewed / keen literary sensibility.

That might be somewhat a truism for poetry in general, yet it holds deeper layers of truth in an event of this nature: where the recited poem - in a lone human voice - at once celebrates, reflects on & participates in a historical moment. For this sort of poetry, hearing is far better than merely reading on the page. The poem she recited is entitled “ The Hill We Climb.” Of course a Presidential inauguration is a very tour-de-force situation & she rose to the occasion. When 22-year-old poet Amanda Gorman stepped into view and began to speak, this was the first I’d heard or read from her work. On January 20, 2021, watching - like everybody - the momentous event of the US Presidential inauguration, I hadn’t looked into details about the inaugural poem’s author - although I’d heard there would be a poem. Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer” (courtesy PBS News Hour) “Amanda Gorman ’20, the first Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, is pictured in Harvard Yard at Harvard University.

The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman