On NPR: Poet Amanda Gorman Celebrates the Gift of Blackness for Juneteenth

ICYMI: The Poet Amanda Gordon, who's recitation of the poem “The Hill We Climb” at President Joe Biden's inauguration captivated the nation, appeared Friday on NPR's Morning Edition, where she spoke with host Leila Fadel.

"The work of the poet is often the same work of democracy building," Gorman said. "It's to equalize, it's to connect, to engage, never to oppress."

Morning Edition Editor Olivia Hampton writes that Gorman’s performance of her work is “an art form built on the call-and-response traditions of Black sermons and protest chants. They are incantatory performances, framed with illustrative hand gestures, that deliver their punch through the time-tested devices of rhythm, rhyme and antithesis.”

Gorman read a poem from her 2021 collection, Call Us What We Carry, and even across the airwaves delived the kind of performance Hampton describes.

Here is the final stanza of “Fury and Faith.”

Together, we envision a land that is liberated, not lawless.
We create a future that is free, not flawless.
Again & again, over & over,
We will stride up every mountainside,
Magnanimous & modest.
We will be protected & served
By a force that is honored & honest.
This is more than protest
                  It's a promise.

Listen to the (short) Amanda Gorman feature and reading at NPR. 

Read Fury & Faith on Penguin Random House.