March Poetry Blog

Link to New Day’s Lyric:

https://www.dailygood.org/story/2867/-new-day-s-lyric-amanda-gorman

Link to “Hope” is the thing with feathers:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314

Amanda Gorman’s poem “New Day’s Lyric” focuses on the ability to overcome adversity and keep hope throughout. This poem begins with a stanza that uses wordplay to convey the efforts of fixing what is broken in our society. Phrases like,  “mourning, we come to mend,” and, “torn, we come to tend,” showcase the juxtaposition in our society and her goals for the future. She uses what society is currently facing, like the fact that we are mourning and torn after COVID-19 and everything else that happened in 2020 and 2021, and shares that she wishes we mend and tend in 2022 as it is a new opportunity for us. 

In the second stanza, she states how these struggles are normalized but how she wants to move on to different times. She asks that, when things return to more normal life, they don’t return fully to that and instead, “reach toward what is next.” This shows her hopes and goals for the future where the world changes into more accepting and moves on in a way to honor the past but still improve what can be improved. 

In the third stanza, Gorman uses wordplay once again to show the balance between what is and what could be. She says that she wants, “our hearts, once all together beaten,/Now all together beat.” This is saying that we can embrace the struggle of the past and use it to propel us to the future. 

In the last stanza, Gorman talks about how this hope will push us and impact us as a society. She says that we are holding the spirit of growth, “In a new day’s lyric,/In our hearts, we hear it.” This is saying that we all have it in us to change and to find the good in the future. She knows that, if we want to, we can change and we can push to the better. She ends the poem by saying,  “For wherever we come together,/We will forever overcome.” This is Gorman once again emphasizing the strength in numbers concept. She knows that if we put the lyrics and the pressure to change to the test, we can accomplish whatever we want.

This piece has a similar theme to the poem, “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” by Emily Dickinson, a poem written in 1861 and published in 1891. Although Dickinson’s poem is more focused on an individual bird bringing constant hope to her as an individual, it keeps the same mindset of the hope always being there consistently, no matter what has happened. This is evident through Dickinson saying, “And sings the tune without the words – / And never stops – at all.” This shows that the bird is always there to keep people safe and keep them encouraged, much like the lyrics of the New Day in Amanda Gorman’s poem. 

Dickinson’s poem concludes with the stanza, “I’ve heard it in the chillest land -/ And on the strangest Sea – / Yet – never – in Extremity, / It asked a crumb – of me.” This is very similar to the piece in Gorman’s where it said that it is in everyone’s hearts. Both of these quotes are basically saying that the hope is something that will never waver because it is in us and we don’t have to work for it, just with it in order to move forward.

February Poetry Blog

The poem “America” by Amanda Gorman has an overarching theme of a call for justice. Gorman begins the poem with the commonly used phrase, “A house divided cannot stand.” She then says that this must mean devastation, as our house, meaning our country, is divided. This poetry book was published in 2021, with Gorman herself saying that the majority of these poems were written in 2020, during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement. This can be seen to correlate with the next line of her poem, where she says that our country only cares about certain groups of people, and that, “This is why red seeps from our flag.” She is saying that, because our country only cares to protect a certain group of people, we see people and groups “bleed out” everyday and we do nothing in any attempt to save them or to support them.

The next section is also interesting, where she points out some of the inequalities in the way we talk about people. She lists groups of discriminated against people, like African-Americans and Asian-Americans, then points out that it is always, “American & Adjective. American & Qualifier.” This shows how our society is so conditioned to look upon people and label them in a group, one that makes them inferior to ourselves, just to keep everyone separated. This leads to increased discrimination because, as Gorman mentions, there is no one saying “White-Americans.” This shows that we have been forced to see one group at a higher standard than other groups.

She then continues on by saying that, “Erasure demands a lifetime of rehearsal.” In this statement, Gorman is saying that people cannot just be removed or forgotten about without having been involved in the past. She is saying that the groups that are continuously pushed aside have been pushed aside because of the efforts they’ve made to not be. She proves this by concluding the poem with, “When told that we can’t make a difference, we’ll still make a sound.” This is a very powerful line to end on. She is saying that people will no longer accept being erased. Instead people will make a little progress,and eventually that progress will add up. Although one person can’t change the way life goes, a bunch of people together can help to solve some of the problems that have taken place in our country forever.

This can connect to a lot of the murals that were up after the killing of George Floyd in 2020. This was a time where everyone became even more aware of all of the disparities that were still occuring in the world around us, so people began to act on it.  A very big time for art is any time there are tragedy’s, and during this time, there were some. This led to people around the country painting murals in major cities, trying to raise awareness for this unfairness and the unequal treatment of certain groups, including African-Americans. This is just like Amanda Gorman’s poem “America.”