Amanda Gorman on Life After Inauguration

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 31 December 2021

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One year ago, Amanda Gorman delivered the inaugural poem on the day that Joe Biden became President. Gorman was just twenty-two years old, and it was just two weeks after Trump supporters had assaulted the Capitol in an effort to stop Congress from certifying the election. At the ceremony, Gorman herself seemed to cast light on a dark situation. Her poem “The Hill We Climb” reads, “When day comes, we ask ourselves: / Where can we find light / In this never-ending shade? / The loss we carry, a sea we must wade. / We’ve braved the belly of the beast.” The New Yorker’s poetry editor, Kevin Young, wrote that her poem was “as vibrant and elegant as her yellow coat against the cold.” After that very public début, Gorman found the stakes of writing the poems for her new collection, “Call Us What We Carry,” to be impossibly high. (It was excerpted in The New Yorker with readings by Gorman.) She spoke with Young about being an inaugural poet—following in the footsteps of Maya Angelou and Elizabeth Alexander—in a conversation from The New Yorker’s Poetry Podcast.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:11.4	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:15.2	Let me introduce Amanda Gorman, our nation's first ever...
0:19.9	Most of us became acquainted with the poet Amanda Gorman one year ago.
0:24.6	When she delivered the inaugural poem on the day that Joe Biden became president,
0:28.6	Gorman at the time was just 22 years old.
0:35.6	Mr. President, Dr. Biden, Madam Vice President,
0:42.3	but she stepped to the podium with remarkable presence and confidence.
0:46.3	The world.
0:47.9	When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade the loss we carry a sea we must wade we've braved the belly of the beast we've learned that quiet isn't always peace in the norms and notions of what just is, isn't always just is.
1:15.5	It was just two weeks after Trump supporters had assaulted the Capitol in an effort to
1:20.4	stop Congress from certifying the election. And yet Gorman herself seemed to cast light on a
1:26.6	very dark situation.
1:28.6	The New Yorker's poetry editor, Kevin Young, wrote that her poem was as vibrant and elegant
1:34.1	as her yellow coat against the cold. Amanda Gorman has just published a new collection of poems,
1:40.3	mostly written after that very public debut. She spoke recently with Kevin Young.
1:46.1	On December 6th, 2021, the New Yorker published a sequence of poems from your book,
1:50.6	Call Us What We Carry, including Ships Manifest, which you'll read for us momentarily.
1:55.2	Is there anything you like to tell us about the poem first, anything listeners might need to know?
2:00.7	I'm trying to think.
2:03.3	All I would say before you kind of engage with it is when I wrote Chips Manifest,
2:09.2	I originally wasn't necessarily writing it for readers.
	...

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