Gorman paves path for my daughters
Monica Rhor says poet laureate spoke to everyone whose aching soul needed soothing after four years of chaos, cruelty and corruption.
Even on a stage with presidents and first ladies past and present, larger-thanlife musical divas and black-robed Supreme Court justices, Amanda Gorman dazzled.
With her luminous presence and nimble words that captured a singular moment of challenge and change, of heartache and hopefulness, the 22-year-old poet from Los Angeles held us spellbound.
In my family room, I watched with my two daughters as a young Black woman celebrated the inauguration of the 46th president of the United States. I had pulled them away from virtual learning to bear witness to that moment, to soak in her artistry, to see themselves and the wide-open door of their future reflected on national television.
I’m so glad I did.
In Gorman, I saw a beacon on the path ahead of my girls.
Gorman, the nation’s youngest inaugural poet, was poised and powerful, insightful and inspirational. In her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” she spoke of a country “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.”
She spoke to everyone whose aching soul needed soothing after four years of an administration marked by chaos, cruelty and corruption. In 2016, after Donald Trump was elected, my heart and stomach were knotted tightly as I contemplated the world my daughters would be living in.
“I wanted to grasp them in a tight embrace and never let go,” I wrote at the time, “to protect them against an onslaught of ugliness that I see ahead.”
The ugliness — even worse than I imagined — came. But we staggered through it. And, this week, a beautiful poet in a Prada coat as yellow as the summer sun, a cherry-red puff headband and braids like my daughters often wear helped make sense of the darkness as she ushered in the light.
We 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.
Gorman seemed the very embodiment of that dawn — in her bright colors and glowing complexion, in the hands that darted like doves to punctuate her rhyme, in the verses that bridge the troubles of the past with the promise of tomorrow.
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. That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.
That Gorman could meld both hope and harsh truths speaks to her own journey in turning struggle into art with a speech impediment so severe that three years ago she would have stumbled over some parts of her own poem — and to the aspirations of a nation grappling with multiple crises.
Gorman, who became the first national youth poet laureate while studying at Harvard, was chosen by first lady Jill Biden to recite a piece at the inauguration, following in the tradition of Robert Frost, Maya Angelou and Richard Blanco. She finished the poem after the Jan. 6 insurrection at Capitol Hill, incorporating lines that capture the calamity of that day.
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it,
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
And this effort very nearly succeeded. But while democracy can be periodically delayed,
It can never be permanently defeated. As I listened to Gorman unfurl her words, I studied my daughters who were gazing at the TV screen, intrigued and animated. They, too, are young Black women growing up in a country where racism festers like a wound that will not heal. They, too, will need all the bravery and talent and boldness they carry in their veins.
May they know in their bones that they come from a tradition that nurtures writers like Gorman, who wore a caged bird ring as an ode to Angelou and repeats a mantra honoring the “freedom fighters who broke through chains and changed the world” before every reading.
May that moment — when a poet who looks like them held the nation in thrall — stay with them forever. May they call on that image when the world buffets them and tries to steal their spirit.
And may they always remember Gorman’s closing words:
The new dawn balloons 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.