Source: Gift
Hardcover, 30 pgs.
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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