The Hill We Climb

"The Hill We Climb" by Amanda Gorman, poet laureate, at the Inauguration.
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Comments

  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    @Gramps49 since Purg is a place for serious discussion, please can you do a little more than just posting a link without further comment.

    Thank you

    BroJames, Purgatory Host
  • tclunetclune Shipmate
    Try clicking on the Video Transcript tab. If that computer-generated transcript doesn't generate enough comment to get this thread transferred to The Circus, I will be surprised and disappointed.
  • ECraigRECraigR Castaway
    Oh I’ll do it: good performance, bad poem.

    Everyone has spoken to me of her and her poem, but they never mention lines, they mention how she used her hands or spoke or something else, not the poem itself. If what’s noticeable about a poet reading a poem is how the poet in question reads the poem and not the poem itself, then that’s good indication the poem isn’t good.

    Furthermore, Amanda Gorman is the poet laureate of Los Angeles or something like that, not the United States Poet Laureate, which continues to be Joy Harjo.
  • She's the Youth Poet Laureate according to the media. I was half listening to it on the radio and got the message fine.
  • I guess the poem appeals to current American zeitgeist. Rather obvious. The verbal equivalent of a photograph. Not much like a painting, which interprets what the artist seems.
  • I think that in a context like that, where it's in amongst other things, and not the most important part of proceedings, something with an obvious message works better than something nuanced or allegorical.
  • tclunetclune Shipmate
    I guess the poem appeals to current American zeitgeist. Rather obvious. The verbal equivalent of a photograph. Not much like a painting, which interprets what the artist sees.

    It was an occasional poem. There aren't many of that genre that inspire awe for generations to come. ISTM that the genre is designed to be more photograph than painting, to use your analogy.
  • Pendragon wrote: »
    She's the Youth Poet Laureate according to the media.
    To be precise, she was the first National Youth Poet Laureate, having been named such by the Library of Congress in 2017. There have been, I think, three National Youth Poets Laureate named since, each serving for a year.


    tclune wrote: »
    I guess the poem appeals to current American zeitgeist. Rather obvious. The verbal equivalent of a photograph. Not much like a painting, which interprets what the artist sees.

    It was an occasional poem. There aren't many of that genre that inspire awe for generations to come. ISTM that the genre is designed to be more photograph than painting, to use your analogy.
    Agreed.

    There actually were a number of lines that struck chords with me. Among them was:

    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

    I very much liked the poem.

  • I had the inauguration running mostly in background. Listening to Amanda Gorman reading, it sounded like a very good speech - lots of rhetorical tricks, etc., but I was still waiting for something resembling a poem to begin when she finished.
  • The transcript in the OP link is automatically-generated, full of obvious errors, and presented as one big blob.

    Try this presentation of the text at USA Today. Starts around 1/4 of the way down, on the right. Much, much better.
  • Alan29Alan29 Shipmate
    Its analagous to a pop song. Designed to be listened to rather than read silently off the page.
    What is on the page is just one part of the whole. I was surprised at how rudimentary Beatles songs look when you see them in score.
  • ECraigR wrote: »
    Oh I’ll do it: good performance, bad poem.

    Everyone has spoken to me of her and her poem, but they never mention lines, they mention how she used her hands or spoke or something else, not the poem itself. If what’s noticeable about a poet reading a poem is how the poet in question reads the poem and not the poem itself, then that’s good indication the poem isn’t good.

    Because when I listen to someone recite a poem for 5 minutes, I memorize memorable lines as they pass, while still taking in the lines that come next. Come off it. This is an absurd criterion.
  • Very enjoyable and stirring. Reminded me of poetry slams and even rap.
  • Reminds me of a style of preaching that is that wonderful blend of prophecy, poetry, and hope.
  • Yes, re poetry slams and rap. She performed it very well, very elegantly, and very carefully. It and the situation took a lot out of her: when she stepped away from the podium, there was just a moment when ISTM her face drained, and she looked like she might collapse.

    I need more time to absorb the poem; but from both hearing and reading it, I think it's well within the ballpark of what we need right now.

    PS Her outfit was *stunning*! Definitely moreso than Robert Frost's when he spoke his "The Gift Outright" at JFK's inauguration.
    ;)

    Backstory and details: "Why Robert Frost Didn't Get to Read the Poem He Wrote for John F. Kennedy's Inauguration" (Biography.com).
  • ECraigRECraigR Castaway
    edited January 22
    mousethief wrote: »
    ECraigR wrote: »
    Oh I’ll do it: good performance, bad poem.

    Everyone has spoken to me of her and her poem, but they never mention lines, they mention how she used her hands or spoke or something else, not the poem itself. If what’s noticeable about a poet reading a poem is how the poet in question reads the poem and not the poem itself, then that’s good indication the poem isn’t good.

    Because when I listen to someone recite a poem for 5 minutes, I memorize memorable lines as they pass, while still taking in the lines that come next. Come off it. This is an absurd criterion.

    Those of us in the poetry world do precisely that. It’s the standard criterion, sorry if the standard is absurd, I’m not sure who you can take that up with to get it changed.

    I’m not saying she ought to have done something extremely difficult and radical, but doing something so typical and boring wasn’t necessary either.

    Poetry gets one time every four years to be in the national spotlight for a moment. This seems like the kind of thing that the current Poet Laureate should get to do, and it’s somewhat strange they don’t, but whatever.
  • TelfordTelford Shipmate
    She's a nice well spoken young lady but I hadn't a clue what she was going on about. I was waiting for a poen and never heard one
  • Telford--

    Check out the link to the text version I posted, about 1/2 way up this page.
  • ECraigR wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    ECraigR wrote: »
    Oh I’ll do it: good performance, bad poem.

    Everyone has spoken to me of her and her poem, but they never mention lines, they mention how she used her hands or spoke or something else, not the poem itself. If what’s noticeable about a poet reading a poem is how the poet in question reads the poem and not the poem itself, then that’s good indication the poem isn’t good.

    Because when I listen to someone recite a poem for 5 minutes, I memorize memorable lines as they pass, while still taking in the lines that come next. Come off it. This is an absurd criterion.

    Those of us in the poetry world do precisely that. It’s the standard criterion, sorry if the standard is absurd, I’m not sure who you can take that up with to get it changed.

    I’m not saying she ought to have done something extremely difficult and radical, but doing something so typical and boring wasn’t necessary either.

    Poetry gets one time every four years to be in the national spotlight for a moment. This seems like the kind of thing that the current Poet Laureate should get to do, and it’s somewhat strange they don’t, but whatever.

    But you weren't saying people in the poetry world didn't cling into a passage. You were complaining that we lesser morals didn't. We're not trained for that. You're expecting us to be something we're not.
  • There are all sorts of poems, and all sorts of ways people experience them.
  • ECraigRECraigR Castaway
    A well-written poem spoken clearly and well grabs people, even feeble minded mortals. A poorly-written poem performed well and enthusiastically grabs people because it’s a performance, not because it’s a poem.

    I dragged a friend to see Frank Bidart read at a poetry festival four or five years ago, and she still remembers lines from “Ellen West” that he read, as well as others, and is an untrained lesser being, completely uninterested in poetry.

    This is what I mean: Joy Harjo is an excellent poet and an excellent reader of poetry; I think that if our Poet Laureate had read an epithalamium for the occasion people would remember the poem and the poet, not just the poet.
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    BroJames

    If you haven't caught how I begin many of the threads I start, I will post something and just let it speak for itself. It is a technique used in andragogy.

    But, if you insist, I thought it spoke eloquently to the insurrection we Americans experienced on 6 January. It does describe the American Zeitgeist we have experienced over the last four years. It some ways, we are now coming out of our dark years. It offers a lot of hope, IMHO.

    A little bit of background. Ms Gorman has said she had a speech impediment much like Mr. Biden's stuttering until she overcame it in her sophomore year of college.

    Mr. Trump had the habit of mocking people who had disabilities, Biden celebrates those who are mastering them.

    BTW, last year Biden met a teenager, Braydon Harrington (12, now 13) in Vermont. Biden worked with Harrington, encouraging him to not give up. On Wednesday night, Harrington recited the JFK inaugural speech flawlessly during the Celebrate America program.

    Name another president who has done that.


  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    I agree that it may not be reprinted in literary anthologies one hundred years from now. That wasn't what it was for and not what it needed to do. It was an occasion that called for general vague uplift and stirring sentiment without being too specific about why some stirring sentiment was required.
  • Golden KeyGolden Key Shipmate
    edited January 22
    Gramps--

    Ah, *that's* who that boy was. I knew the back story about Joe helping a boy, but not that it was that one. He did a great job. Plus there was a pic of JFK next to him, and they seemed to look similar around the eyes, which enhanced the experience.
  • dogwalkerdogwalker Shipmate Posts: 8
    Gramps49 said:
    BTW, last year Biden met a teenager, Braydon Harrington (12, now 13) in Vermont.

    New Hampshire, not Vermont. But to be fair, they're side by side just south of the Canadian border, and easy to mix up.
  • As noted above, occasional poetry doesn't have a great tradition - long, but not great. The style of Amanda Gorman's poetry is not something I must like, generally. And I do read and write poetry. That said, I thought that it was note perfect to the occasion, especially in the aftermath of 6 January. I liked some of her wordplay. She's only 22. I wish her a long career during which she can hone her art and show the nay-sayers.
  • MaryLouiseMaryLouise Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    edited January 22
    Much of the poetry out in southern African traditions is oral and recited, learned by heart, improvised, public. As a performance, Amanda Gorman's moment was for me quite electrifying, very poised and engaging.

    It is an anomaly, the poem created for an inauguration, as @ECraigR points out, something rare and puzzling for most. When I was looking, later that evening, at President Joe Biden in the White House holding his baby grandchild while dancing a little to the televised concert with Demi Lovato singing, it signalled something different in place. Sincere? Possibly. Unscripted, spontaneous? No, but that is how politics and spectacle works. Ditto performance poetry.

    Amanda Gorman can be read as representing aspirational blackness -- she's looking back to rap traditions (echoes at moments of Doug Kearney and Jayne Cortez' brilliant He Got She Got). Gorman's wearing Prada and a flashy ring all paid for by Oprah (who also bought the outfit Maya Angelou wore when she was inaugural poet).

    What I liked was that this wasn't about American pride in the past or white exceptionalism -- she was standing within a long tradition of rhetorical fighters and inviting her own Black generation to step back into a broken past, feel the pain and think about what can be done to repair the brokenness. In South Africa, many younger Black listeners said it sounded like our imbongii ancestral praise song tradition that acknowledges failure and weakness in leaders while looking to possibility.

    Not John Winthrop's shining 'city on a hill' in the Massachusetts Bay colony of 1630, but the hill we have to climb here and now.



  • I noticed that when she was reciting places in the country and implying heritage and origin, all she mentioned about the South was how hot it was, although the 'baked earth' (I forget the exact words) could have implied earth depleted by cotton.
  • Martin54Martin54 Shipmate
    edited January 22
    A nice, yearning, inclusive, soft rap. If only she were Republican! Love the Frost.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    I think her career trajectory is more likely to be political speech-writer, rather than professional poet. And that's a respectable profession, to be sure.

  • RuthRuth Shipmate
    ECraigR wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    ECraigR wrote: »
    Oh I’ll do it: good performance, bad poem.

    Everyone has spoken to me of her and her poem, but they never mention lines, they mention how she used her hands or spoke or something else, not the poem itself. If what’s noticeable about a poet reading a poem is how the poet in question reads the poem and not the poem itself, then that’s good indication the poem isn’t good.

    Because when I listen to someone recite a poem for 5 minutes, I memorize memorable lines as they pass, while still taking in the lines that come next. Come off it. This is an absurd criterion.

    Those of us in the poetry world do precisely that. It’s the standard criterion, sorry if the standard is absurd, I’m not sure who you can take that up with to get it changed.

    I saw a number of people on Twitter not in "the poetry world" quote lines immediately after the performance, so I'm not buying the idea that it had no memorable lines. People who felt it spoke to them were most frequently repeating the last two lines, in part I'm sure because the end of something you just heard is the easiest thing to remember.

    Given the number of different schools of literary criticism and the fact that the critical consensus of which poems are good and which aren't has changed again and again, just the idea that there is a standard criterion is laughable. It's been a while since I abandoned the academic study of poetry, but I don't recall any school of criticism in which having memorable lines is a criterion. Perhaps this is a recent development of which I am unaware.
  • Snobbery?
  • ECraigRECraigR Castaway
    Ruth wrote: »
    ECraigR wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    ECraigR wrote: »
    Oh I’ll do it: good performance, bad poem.

    Everyone has spoken to me of her and her poem, but they never mention lines, they mention how she used her hands or spoke or something else, not the poem itself. If what’s noticeable about a poet reading a poem is how the poet in question reads the poem and not the poem itself, then that’s good indication the poem isn’t good.

    Because when I listen to someone recite a poem for 5 minutes, I memorize memorable lines as they pass, while still taking in the lines that come next. Come off it. This is an absurd criterion.

    Those of us in the poetry world do precisely that. It’s the standard criterion, sorry if the standard is absurd, I’m not sure who you can take that up with to get it changed.

    I saw a number of people on Twitter not in "the poetry world" quote lines immediately after the performance, so I'm not buying the idea that it had no memorable lines. People who felt it spoke to them were most frequently repeating the last two lines, in part I'm sure because the end of something you just heard is the easiest thing to remember.

    Given the number of different schools of literary criticism and the fact that the critical consensus of which poems are good and which aren't has changed again and again, just the idea that there is a standard criterion is laughable. It's been a while since I abandoned the academic study of poetry, but I don't recall any school of criticism in which having memorable lines is a criterion. Perhaps this is a recent development of which I am unaware.

    I'm not on Twitter, so was only talking about my experience with people I encountered. Those people commented on the performance, not the poem. I'm not saying Gorman is a bad poet.

    The consensus I was speaking of was the consensus for a successful poetry reading. You're welcome to disagree.
    Snobbery?

    I was waiting for that ad hominem. Say you dislike a thing that other people like, express why you dislike it, and it's snobbery. It's utterly impossible that someone can genuinely dislike something with stated and valid reasons.

    I'm not saying Gorman is a bad poet, and I'm not saying that occasional poetry has to be phenomenal. I'd just like to see the one time the poetry world is brought to the national consciousness be used in a way that focuses on the poetry and not the poet, or the poet's performance.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Poetry World possibly a different planet.

    I am all for formal versification, but as anyone who's ever looked at the lower shelves of eng lit can testify, rhyme and metre, however correctly applied are not enough.

    @ECraigR feels the content is, as we say on Art World, chocolate-boxy.

    I say we have heightened speech, formed by specific events and delivered on a public occasion in the context of those and wider histories. It resonates with many who hear it - it is popular because it is popularis, of the people. Maybe she should have begun with 'Hwæt!'?
  • RuthRuth Shipmate
    ECraigR wrote: »
    I'm not saying Gorman is a bad poet.

    You said her work is bad poem.
    The consensus I was speaking of was the consensus for a successful poetry reading.

    You said it was a good performance. Make up your mind.
    Snobbery?

    I was waiting for that ad hominem. Say you dislike a thing that other people like, express why you dislike it, and it's snobbery. It's utterly impossible that someone can genuinely dislike something with stated and valid reasons.

    You tried to speak from a position of authority as an inhabitant of "the poetry world," explaining to the rest of us what the proper criterion for judging poetry is. You claimed that your standard of judgement is superior to others.
    I'd just like to see the one time the poetry world is brought to the national consciousness be used in a way that focuses on the poetry and not the poet, or the poet's performance.

    Why?
  • ECraigRECraigR Castaway
    Firenze wrote: »
    Poetry World possibly a different planet.

    I am all for formal versification, but as anyone who's ever looked at the lower shelves of eng lit can testify, rhyme and metre, however correctly applied are not enough.

    @ECraigR feels the content is, as we say on Art World, chocolate-boxy.

    I say we have heightened speech, formed by specific events and delivered on a public occasion in the context of those and wider histories. It resonates with many who hear it - it is popular because it is popularis, of the people. Maybe she should have begun with 'Hwæt!'?

    She could have begun with "Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings!, that would have been cool.

    I'm certainly not advocating for formal verse. I'm in the world of experimental poetry and don't believe regular meter and rhyme are necessary for poetry.
  • ECraigRECraigR Castaway
    Ruth wrote: »
    ECraigR wrote: »
    I'm not saying Gorman is a bad poet.

    You said her work is bad poem.
    The consensus I was speaking of was the consensus for a successful poetry reading.

    You said it was a good performance. Make up your mind.
    Snobbery?

    I was waiting for that ad hominem. Say you dislike a thing that other people like, express why you dislike it, and it's snobbery. It's utterly impossible that someone can genuinely dislike something with stated and valid reasons.

    You tried to speak from a position of authority as an inhabitant of "the poetry world," explaining to the rest of us what the proper criterion for judging poetry is. You claimed that your standard of judgement is superior to others.
    I'd just like to see the one time the poetry world is brought to the national consciousness be used in a way that focuses on the poetry and not the poet, or the poet's performance.

    Why?

    Good poets write bad poems all the time.

    Poetry readings shouldn't be performances. They should be readings.

    Again, I'm talking about poetry readings. Poetry readings are different from poetry. I'm sorry if it came off as if I was talking down, I was explaining how everyone I know who is serious about poetry talks about and understands readings, and what makes for a successful reading.

    I'd like the national consciousness to focus on the poem and not the poet or the poet's performance because I care deeply about poetry. I believe that focusing on the poem, on an exemplary poem, could ideally result in people being interested in poetry and the incredible world it invokes, and the people who live within it. Perhaps that will result with Gorman's poem. It seems unlikely to me, but I'd be delighted to be wrong.
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    Ms Gorman has said she might be back on that stage taking the oath of office herself.

    Oh, we have not seen the last of her.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Ah, a poet who wishes to become an acknowledged legislator of the world.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    While there are differences between poetry schools I think they'd all agree that good poetry only uses grand uplifting abstract words if it can flesh them out with concrete instances, avoids using old metaphors if it can't rub the encrustations off, and generally tries to avoid language that merely evokes a stock response.

    This is a perfectly valuable and important activity, but not what is wanted on an inauguration which is trying to evoke as many stock uplifting responses as effectively as possible. The time for true poetry is when the concrete policies come along.
  • Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Pendragon wrote: »
    She's the Youth Poet Laureate according to the media.
    To be precise, she was the first National Youth Poet Laureate, having been named such by the Library of Congress in 2017. There have been, I think, three National Youth Poets Laureate named since, each serving for a year.


    tclune wrote: »
    I guess the poem appeals to current American zeitgeist. Rather obvious. The verbal equivalent of a photograph. Not much like a painting, which interprets what the artist sees.

    It was an occasional poem. There aren't many of that genre that inspire awe for generations to come. ISTM that the genre is designed to be more photograph than painting, to use your analogy.
    Agreed.

    There actually were a number of lines that struck chords with me. Among them was:

    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

    I very much liked the poem.

    This leads me to elaborate my previous comment. I tried to like the poem. But realized that she did not recite a poem. A poem has a different structure than a speech. This was a speech. An exercise for a English class might be to label all the stylistic devices she used in her speech. The lines you quote are "anaphora".
  • LuciaLucia Shipmate
    I enjoyed listening to this. To me it came across as a Spoken Word performance, which is not quite the same thing as a recitation of a poem. I think Spoken Word as an art form is very much about the way it is performed, it seems to be very bound up to the performer. A poem could be read by someone other than the poet. I don't think someone other than the artist performing a Spoken Word piece would feel quite the same to me.
  • Firenze wrote: »
    Poetry World possibly a different planet.
    And I will readily admit that I’m definitely not an inhabitant of that different planet. I enjoy some poetry, but I wouldn’t call myself someone who appreciates poetry generally.

    That said, to my non-discerning ear, Amanda Gorman and her poem—many lines of which did indeed resonate with me—was the high point of the inauguration. Like @questioning, I found it very reminiscent of preaching in African American churches, which can have a definite sense of poetry or musicality. I think that may be part of the reason Gorman was chosen to read her poetry—that and the connection I imagine Biden feels with her given her history of a speech impediment that @Gramps49 noted.

    I will say her poetry was, to me, a most welcome relief after Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez and Garth Brookes.

    Okay, Lady Gaga wasn’t as bad as I feared, but I didn’t share the feeling that many had of how great it was. (I didn’t like Whitney Houston’s version either, so it may all say as much about me as anything.) I loved the symbolism of J-Lo singing “This Land Is My Land” and “America the Beautiful,” but I didn’t like the arrangements at all.

    As for Garth Brookes and “Amazing Grace”—that apparent calla lily of hymns, deemed by so many suitable to any occasion—just how hard is it to sing “amazing” as one word, without breathing in the middle? (The answer: Not hard at all.) Not that I particularly like the song to start with, but that just drives me nuts.

  • Alan29Alan29 Shipmate
    ECraigR wrote: »
    Ruth wrote: »
    ECraigR wrote: »
    I'm not saying Gorman is a bad poet.

    You said her work is bad poem.
    The consensus I was speaking of was the consensus for a successful poetry reading.

    You said it was a good performance. Make up your mind.
    Snobbery?

    I was waiting for that ad hominem. Say you dislike a thing that other people like, express why you dislike it, and it's snobbery. It's utterly impossible that someone can genuinely dislike something with stated and valid reasons.

    You tried to speak from a position of authority as an inhabitant of "the poetry world," explaining to the rest of us what the proper criterion for judging poetry is. You claimed that your standard of judgement is superior to others.
    I'd just like to see the one time the poetry world is brought to the national consciousness be used in a way that focuses on the poetry and not the poet, or the poet's performance.

    Why?

    Good poets write bad poems all the time.

    Poetry readings shouldn't be performances. They should be readings.

    Again, I'm talking about poetry readings. Poetry readings are different from poetry. I'm sorry if it came off as if I was talking down, I was explaining how everyone I know who is serious about poetry talks about and understands readings, and what makes for a successful reading.

    I'd like the national consciousness to focus on the poem and not the poet or the poet's performance because I care deeply about poetry. I believe that focusing on the poem, on an exemplary poem, could ideally result in people being interested in poetry and the incredible world it invokes, and the people who live within it. Perhaps that will result with Gorman's poem. It seems unlikely to me, but I'd be delighted to be wrong.

    Unless given by performance poets, of course.
  • ECraigRECraigR Castaway
    Dafyd wrote: »
    While there are differences between poetry schools I think they'd all agree that good poetry only uses grand uplifting abstract words if it can flesh them out with concrete instances, avoids using old metaphors if it can't rub the encrustations off, and generally tries to avoid language that merely evokes a stock response.

    This is a perfectly valuable and important activity, but not what is wanted on an inauguration which is trying to evoke as many stock uplifting responses as effectively as possible. The time for true poetry is when the concrete policies come along.

    I think how a culture and society treats and celebrates public days of cultural significance, like an inauguration, says a lot about that culture and society. I don't believe a poem like the one Gorman gave us was great for the occasion because America needs more right now than just pretty generalizations and stock cliches.
  • Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Firenze wrote: »
    Poetry World possibly a different planet.
    And I will readily admit that I’m definitely not an inhabitant of that different planet. I enjoy some poetry, but I wouldn’t call myself someone who appreciates poetry generally.

    That said, to my non-discerning ear, Amanda Gorman and her poem—many lines of which did indeed resonate with me—was the high point of the inauguration. Like @questioning, I found it very reminiscent of preaching in African American churches, which can have a definite sense of poetry or musicality. I think that may be part of the reason Gorman was chosen to read her poetry—that and the connection I imagine Biden feels with her given her history of a speech impediment that @Gramps49 noted.

    I will say her poetry was, to me, a most welcome relief after Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez and Garth Brookes.

    Okay, Lady Gaga wasn’t as bad as I feared, but I didn’t share the feeling that many had of how great it was. (I didn’t like Whitney Houston’s version either, so it may all say as much about me as anything.) I loved the symbolism of J-Lo singing “This Land Is My Land” and “America the Beautiful,” but I didn’t like the arrangements at all.

    As for Garth Brookes and “Amazing Grace”—that apparent calla lily of hymns, deemed by so many suitable to any occasion—just how hard is it to sing “amazing” as one word, without breathing in the middle? (The answer: Not hard at all.) Not that I particularly like the song to start with, but that just drives me nuts.

    Amazing Grace as a hymn always bothers me. The back story of a guy who did great evil and then sings all about himself. So self centered. Also sung far far too often.
  • Nick Tamen wrote: »
    That said, to my non-discerning ear, Amanda Gorman and her poem—many lines of which did indeed resonate with me—was the high point of the inauguration. Like @questioning, I found it very reminiscent of preaching in African American churches, which can have a definite sense of poetry or musicality. I think that may be part of the reason Gorman was chosen to read her poetry—that and the connection I imagine Biden feels with her given her history of a speech impediment that @Gramps49 noted.

    Yes, @Nick Tamen that is what I was hearing. People are free to observe that what she did wasn't poetry - according to whatever criteria they use. However, to me it seemed quite appropriate to the occasion. Perhaps some of us are more willing to cut a bit of slack about forms of poetry/art/rhetoric/preaching. I'm not sure that the categories are so easily separated or can be made to fall into separate Venn circles.
  • Dafyd wrote: »
    While there are differences between poetry schools I think they'd all agree that good poetry only uses grand uplifting abstract words if it can flesh them out with concrete instances, avoids using old metaphors if it can't rub the encrustations off, and generally tries to avoid language that merely evokes a stock response.

    Only because C.S. Lewis is dead.


  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    I decided not to elaborate on C.S.Lewis' arguments about stock responses.
  • "Elaborate" and "admit of its existence" are not coterminous.
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