Names and faces
■ Hallie Knight, a high school senior from Jacksonville, Fla., has some wellformed ideas about where the country is and how she’d like to see it change. The 17-year-old has won a contest organized by the Academy of American Poets for which students under 18 wrote their own inaugural poems in anticipation of today’s swearing in of President-elect Joe Biden. Applicants for the Inaugural Poem Project were urged to submit work that reflects “on the country’s challenges, strengths, and hope for its future,” according to the guidelines. Knight says she “wanted to acknowledge the greatness of the potential for our country at this present moment, and the opportunity we have as citizens to choose what it becomes out of all this chaos.” Inspired by works ranging from W.H. Auden’s “As I Walked Out One Evening” to Adrienne Rich’s “Storm Warnings,” Knight crafted a piece called “To Rebuild” that likens the U.S. to a house that has been severely but not hopelessly damaged. Knight will receive $1,000, and her work — along with the poems of two runners-up — will be featured on Poets.org and in American Poets magazine. Mina King, a 17-year-old from Shreveport, came in second for “In Pursuit of Dawn,” in which she wove in the common American theme of rising from poverty. The third-place finisher is just 12 years old: Gabrielle Marshall, from Richmond, Va. Her “The Power of Hope” acknowledged the country’s profound divisions, and possibilities. The official inaugural poem will be read by Amanda Gorman, the country’s first Youth Poet Laureate. She is 22, just a few years older than Knight. “She is proof to people of all ages, but especially those younger than her, that there is no need to wait to make an impact,” Knight says.
■ A federal judge has ordered the new owners of an Oklahoma zoo featured in Netflix’s “Tiger King” documentary to turn over all the lion and tiger cubs in their possession, along with the animals’ mothers, to the federal government. Jeffrey and Lauren Lowe took over the zoo, which was previously run by Joseph Maldonado-Passage — also known as Joe Exotic — and featured in Netflix’s “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness.” Last week, U.S. District Judge John F. Heil III ruled against the Lowes and the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park based on allegations of violations of the Endangered Species Act and the Animal Welfare Act leveled by the U.S. Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. Jeffrey Lowe’s attorney, Daniel Card of Oklahoma City, didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Maldonado-Passage is serving a 22-year sentence in a Fort Worth federal prison for his conviction on charges that he participated in a murder-for-hire plot and violated federal wildlife laws.