Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman
Source: Gift
Hardcover, 240 pgs.
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Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman, which was the August read-a-long, is the first poetry collection by the youngest poet laureate to read at a presidential inauguration. Her poems read much like a spoken word poet would recite them. She plays a lot with poetic form, crafting lines into images of whales and masks, and placing poignant lines on the stripes of the American flag. Some of these image-focused poems work well, but others just seem to fall flat.
From "Cut" (pg.26-27) Disease is physiological death, Loneliness is a social one, Where the old We collapses like a lung.
From "War: What, Is It Good? (pg. 118-124) War, like a whale, is all consuming- Everything fits into its mesh mouth. Like a whale, a virus can wolf Down the globe whole. The bullet is a beast, as are we. Our invisible battles Are the hardest ones to win. *** The first step in warfare & pandemics is the same: Isolation, to rupture the channels of communication of virus/violence."
Later in that poem on mask vs. no mask (pg. 144) Why it's so perturbing for privileged groups to follow restrictions of place & personhood. Doing so means for once wearing the chains their power has shackled on the rest of us.
Gorman tackles a lot of issues in this collection from slavery and racism to the COVID pandemic and its parallels with the 1918 Spanish flu. Water imagery and references to the slave ships travel throughout the collection, connecting the struggles together into the anchor that many still carry.
There is a lot of struggle and darkness in these poems, but she answers the call of how to move on with love, empathy, and connection. Gorman reminds us that there is hope for change, and that we can make those choices. We are not all that we carry with us.
From "School's Out" (pg. 17-8) Their feet stomp at our life. There is power in being robbed & still choosing to dance.
Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman is strongest when it is passionate and honest, when the poems don’t rely too heavily on physical images or erasure to create declarative poems. Her honesty shines brightest in her youthful passion and I am eager to see more from this poet.
RATING: Tercet
This was our August read-a-long selection for the 2022 Poetry Reading Challenge. You can find those discussions below:
- Week One: Requiem and What a Piece of Wreck Is Man
- Week Two: Earth Eyes and Memoria
- Week Three: Atonement
- Week Four: Fury & Faith and Resolution
About the Poet:
Amanda Gorman is the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history, as well as an award-winning writer and cum laude graduate of Harvard University, where she studied Sociology. She has written for the New York Times and has three books forthcoming with Penguin Random House.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, she began writing at only a few years of age. Now her words have won her invitations to the Obama White House and to perform for Lin-Manuel Miranda, Al Gore, Secretary Hillary Clinton, Malala Yousafzai, and others. Amanda has performed multiple commissioned poems for CBS This Morning and she has spoken at events and venues across the country, including the Library of Congress and Lincoln Center. She has received a Genius Grant from OZY Media, as well as recognition from Scholastic Inc., YoungArts, the Glamour magazine College Women of the Year Awards, and the Webby Awards. She has written for the New York Times newsletter The Edit and penned the manifesto for Nike’s 2020 Black History Month campaign. In 2017, Amanda Gorman was appointed the first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate by Urban Word – a program that supports Youth Poets Laureate in more than 60 cities, regions and states nationally. She is the recipient of the Poets & Writers Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, and is the youngest board member of 826 National, the largest youth writing network in the United States.
Final Week: Amanda Gorman’s Call Us What We Carry Read-a-Long
For this last week, we read the final sections of the collection:Fury & Faith and Resolution.
Here are a few questions to get us started:
- In Fury & Faith, Gorman again takes the poetic form and upends it, placing it onto the stripes of the American flag. What are your thoughts on this use of poetic lines?
- Explore your reactions to the poems in this first of the last two sections. What are some of the things that stuck out to you?
- In the Resolution section, what do you think her main point is about resolution?
I’ll be monitoring the comments and replying throughout the weekend. Can’t wait to see what everyone thinks.
Check out the previous discussions below:
- Week One: Requiem and What a Piece of Wreck Is Man
- Week Two: Earth Eyes and Memoria
- Week Three: Atonement
Thank you to everyone who participated or just read along with us. I hope you enjoyed the book, and I’d love to hear what you thought overall.
Week Three: Amanda Gorman’s Call Us What We Carry Read-a-Long
For this 3rd week, we read the Atonement section.
Here are a few questions to get us started:
1. What was your favorite poem in this section?
2. Erasure poems modify current text to create something new or highlight a particular theme. What impact does this form have on these poems?
3. Gorman offers a great deal of background to these found poems in footnotes and elsewhere, how did or did it not affect your reading of the poems?
I’ll be monitoring the comments and replying throughout the weekend. Can’t wait to see what everyone thinks.
Week Two: Amanda Gorman’s Call Us What We Carry Read-a-Long
For this 2nd week, we read the 3rd and 4th sections: Earth Eyes and Memoria.
Here are a few questions to get us started:
- In Earth Eyes, what do you see are the main themes and how do they relate to the collection’s title, Call Us What We Carry?
- Gorman has a lot of visual forms for her poems, how do they impact your enjoyment of the poems?
- In Memoria, what do you think Gorman is saying about memory and the act of remembering?
- What are some of your favorite lines or poems in these two sections?
I’ll be monitoring the comments and replying throughout the weekend. Can’t wait to see what everyone thinks.
Week One: Amanda Gorman’s Call Us What We Carry Read-a-Long
For this first week, we read the first two sections: Requiem and What a Piece of Wreck is Man
I wanted to start the discussion with a few questions about these two sections.
1. Why do you think “Ship’s Manifest” is the opening poem to the collection and no included in the first section, “Requiem?”
2. Gorman’s first section’s title signals that the poems will be a remembrance of the dead, how well do you think the poems accomplish this task? What was one of your favorites?
3. In “What a Piece of Wreck is Man,” what do you think she’s saying with these poems? Is man irredeemable? Is there more to our failures?
4. What are some of your favorite poems or lines in these two sections?
I’ll be monitoring the comments and replying throughout the weekend. Can’t wait to see what everyone thinks.
Results & Schedule: Poetry Read-a-Long for August
The poll results are in! The August Read-a-Long will be for:
Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman:
Formerly titled The Hill We Climb and Other Poems, Amanda Gorman’s remarkable new collection reveals an energizing and unforgettable voice in American poetry. Call Us What We Carry is Gorman at her finest. Including “The Hill We Climb,” the stirring poem read at the inauguration of the 46th President of the United States, Joe Biden, and bursting with musical language and exploring themes of identity, grief, and memory, this lyric of hope and healing captures an important moment in our country’s consciousness while being utterly timeless.
Reading poetry can be a solitary venture. I’d like us to read and talk about Gorman’s book on a weekly schedule.
For every Friday in August, I will post my initial thoughts about the given section and leave the comments open for you to either share your favorite poems, pose questions about the poems, or add to the discussion.
Here’s the read-a-long schedule for August (I hope you’ll join and encourage others to do so):
- First Discussion Post for sections Requiem and What a Piece of Wreck is Man: Aug. 5
- Second Discussion Post for sections Earth Eyes and Memoria: Aug. 12
- Third Discussion Post for section Atonement: Aug. 19
- Final Discussion Post for sections Fury & Faith and Resolution: Aug. 26
If you’ve joined this year’s Poetry Reading Challenge, this can count as your 1 book of poetry you read this year. Join us and have fun! Remember you don’t have to like all the poems.
The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country by Amanda Gorman
Source: Gift
Hardcover, 30 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate
The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country by Amanda Gorman is a beautiful book that tries to hold the hope of this poem inside its covers, but fails. The hope of Gorman’s poem oozes out of the stanzas, breaks free from the line breaks, and sizzles off the page. It’s hard to believe that she’s only our 6th poet to read at an inauguration. Where have these presidents been that they didn’t seek the powerful words of poets in their own times?
I digress. The foreword in this book is by Oprah Winfrey, and it’s about what you would expect it to be. She pulls quotes from the poem like many reviewers do and she talks about Gorman’s words, the themes, and more. But I wasn’t overly impressed with it and felt that the poem can stand on its own, just as it did at the inauguration.
It’s funny because I started this blog so many years ago, looking at individual poems in magazines, rather than full collections. And here I am again, looking at a single poem that is as powerful and beautiful as the world around us. We just need our eyes to be opened.
Is our world broken? In some ways, it is. And we do carry our losses, like we wade in the sea and the “norms” are not “justice” or “just is,” they are ripe for change and we can make them… for the better. “Victory,” Gorman says, “won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges/we’ve made.” We mustn’t forget, “History has its eyes on us.”
RATING: Cinquain
Mailbox Monday #663
Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.
It now has its own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.
Velvet, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.
This is what we received:
What did you receive?
Mailbox Monday #661
Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.
It now has its own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.
Velvet, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.
This is what we received:
Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman, which was a surprise in the mail.
Formerly titled The Hill We Climb and Other Poems, the luminous poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing. In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, this beautifully designed volume features poems in many inventive styles and structures and shines a light on a moment of reckoning. Call Us What We Carry reveals that Gorman has become our messenger from the past, our voice for the future.
the moon won’t be dared by Anne Leigh Parrish for review.
the moon won’t be dared is a poetry collection by award-winning author Anne Leigh Parrish that features artwork by Lydia Selk. In this momentous debut collection, the poet harnesses language to give readers a new vision of nature, the impossible plight of womanhood, love, aging, and beauty. Being a woman in a male-dominated society affords Anne Leigh Parrish the space to witness the world on an uneven keel. Parrish pays tribute to beauty, but also weaves the harsh truths of betrayal and brutality into the filaments holding the collection together.
What did you receive?
Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem by Amanda Gorman, illustrated by Loren Long
Source: Purchased
Hardcover, 32 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate
Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem by Amanda Gorman, illustrated by Loren Long, is an anthem for change and its images will inspire kids to take action now, rather than think change is something adults have to do. I loved how this book opens with a young girl and her guitar, humming a song – a song of change.
The illustrations in this book are colorful and full of depth, really well shadowed and highlighted. With the opening pages, the young girl is alone on a white background — the white signifying the possibilities around her that aren’t realized and she’s alone, demonstrating that changes starts with each person. This young girl walks by MLK in a mural about dreaming and change, meeting a young musician on the street.
Together, they start small, cleaning up a local park and then helping another young boy, and with each moment of aide they provide, they bring the music of change with them. Gorman’s words speak to the courage it takes to be tolerant and patient with others who are not nice to you; how it is better to build bridges, rather than fences; and all the while building communities of change, hope, and empathy.
Gorman brings together words with Long’s images to create a beautiful picture book about loving yourself, your neighbor, creating community, and making changes in your own hometown. Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem by Amanda Gorman, illustrated by Loren Long, is a delight and I love the simplicity of the words to convey a complex message to kids. It empowers them to take matters into their own hands, creating change in their own backyards.
RATING: Cinquain
Mailbox Monday #650
Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.
It now has its own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.
Velvet, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.
This is what we received:
The Parisian Dancer by Doron Darmon, a Kindle freebie.
Based on a true story, this is an unforgettable novel about a brave woman and her heroic actions, which provided pure hope in a world of darkness.
Paris, 1939: Marek and Annette, who escaped from Poland following the pogroms against the Jews, lead a simple and happy life in France’s capital, together with their two young children. Their Christian neighbor, Helena, an immigrant from Italy who dances at the Folies Bergère nightclub for a living, develops a close relationship with the couple, at the center of which is a secret affair with Marek.
When the Nazis enter Paris, the family’s life, as well as Helena’s, is about to change. Marek embarks on a mission to arrange for his family’s escape but soon disappears without a trace. Annette realizes that time is not on her side, and surrenders her children to the protection of the Dubois family, owners of the neighborhood bakery.
As the Nazis strengthen their hold on the city of Paris, aided by French collaborators, the Dubois family becomes exceedingly more anxious of their situation, until finally, they turn to Helena and beg her to provide a safe home for the children. Bravely, and without hesitation, Helena fulfills her promise to protect her friends’ children at any cost.
But will the beautiful dancer be enough to save them from a terrible fate?
Change Sings by Amanda Gorman, illustrated by Loren Long, which I pre-ordered and am very excited to read.
A lyrical picture book debut from #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman and #1 New York Times bestselling illustrator Loren Long
“I can hear change humming
In its loudest, proudest song.
I don’t fear change coming,
And so I sing along.”In this stirring, much-anticipated picture book by presidential inaugural poet and activist Amanda Gorman, anything is possible when our voices join together. As a young girl leads a cast of characters on a musical journey, they learn that they have the power to make changes—big or small—in the world, in their communities, and in most importantly, in themselves.
With lyrical text and rhythmic illustrations that build to a dazzling crescendo by #1 New York Times bestselling illustrator Loren Long, Change Sings is a triumphant call to action for everyone to use their abilities to make a difference.
Geographies of the Heart by Caitlin Hamilton Summie for review.
Sarah Macmillan always puts her family first, but as she ages, she can’t quite stretch her arms wide enough to hold on to everyone: her career-minded and inattentive younger sister, Glennie; their grandparents, who are slowly fading; or the late-in-life pregnancy Sarah desperately wanted. But it’s her tumultuous relationship with Glennie that gives Sarah the greatest worry. She’d always believed that their relationship was foundational, even unbreakable. Though blessed with a happy marriage to Al, whose compassion and humor she admires, Sarah grows increasingly bitter about Glennie’s absences, until one decision forces them all to decide what family means, and who family is. Narrated by the chorus of their three voices, this elegantly told and deeply moving novel examines the pull of tradition, the power of legacies, and the fertile but fragile ground that is family, the first geography to shape our hearts.
What did you receive?
