Call Us What We Carry: Poems

No one who saw President Joe Biden’s inauguration last January will forget inaugural poet Amanda Gorman. Striding confidently to the microphone at the U.S. Capitol, dressed in bright Prada yellow against the cold, her upswept hairdo crowned by a bold red headband, Gorman recited her poem “The Hill We Climb” with forthright diction and musicality. That musicality was accompanied by eloquent gestures, her hands keeping a steady beat yet adding varied emphases or sculptural air-arcs to underscore her poetic points and phrases. Now Gorman, only the third Black inaugural speaker (after Maya Angelou and Elizabeth Alexander), has published her third best-selling book: first was a handsomely presented copy of “The Hill We Climb,” the second her uplifting children’s book Change Sings (with illustrator Loren Long). Call Us What We Carry is actually her second full collection, after 2015’s The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough. Quite a remarkable resume for a Harvard graduate (with honors), still only twenty-three years old, who’s already served as a National Youth Poet Laureate. While raised in Southern California by a single mother, Joan Wicks, Gorman has a Sacramento family connection: her proud grandmother, Bertha Gaffney Gorman, now retired, served as a reporter for the Sacramento Bee. With Call Us What We Carry, Amanda Gorman confirms what many of us suspected after her inaugural reading: she is an authentic poetical genius. Call Us exhibits a many-layered, multi-media variety of poetic approaches, arranging strong visual presentations of line and stanza, evoking tactile sensations, yet always anchoring the poems upon rhythms and sonorities. These are quite speakable poems. But merely saying this does not do justice to her poetic individuality. What’s most remarkable is how Gorman sweeps up huge tracts of English and American poetical history in her verse. Her techniques include “shape” poems modeled after the seventeenth-century British poet George Herbert, as in “Essex I,” but the lines, arranged in the shape of a giant whale, are an homage to a sunken American whaling vessel (which inspired Melville’s Moby Dick). In its verses, “Essex I” distills the terrors of that ocean voyage to an extended metaphor on our imperiled and imperfect democracy. Elsewhere, Gorman flexes her muscle and displays her eclecticism. Even the epigraphs she chooses (those little snippets of quotation whereby poets suggest what triggered a poem) are significant: Gorman is well acquainted with the work of Canadian poet and Greek scholar Anne Carson, whom she quotes on the connection between elegy (poems of loss) and history. Gorman’s alliterations (identical first letters of successive words) and rhymes, whether end-rhymes or internal rhymes, will evoke hip-hop for many listeners—a perfectly valid take—yet she may also be influenced by the Anglo-Saxon alliterative verses of Beowulf. She is undoubtedly shaped by such Black poetical ancestors as Lucille Clifton and Langston Hughes, especially Hughes’s moments of verbal jazz, yet the voice is Gorman’s throughout. Gorman’s intellectual curiosity and flair for history inform a sequence of authentic diary excerpts by World War I soldier Roy Underwood Plummer, a corporal in a Black regiment of Army engineers. Typewritten entries on lined official notebook paper (photographed) by Plummer precede what must be superimposed verse lines by Gorman, crafted to mimic Plummer’s exact antique typeface. Here, too, Gorman’s command of multiple themes is on view: as elsewhere in the book, we learn about pandemics, and about flaws and failures in our democracy, including but not limited to systemic racism. So we read Corporal Plummer’s words on the 1918 Spanish influenza, juxtaposed with Gorman’s allusions to Covid-19:[Plummer:] Date 1/20/19. Much colder. Epidemic, said to be the “Flu” raising sand with Co. “A”. Quite a number are sent to the Hospital.[Gorman:] Gulps of our lives. Gurgling from our treasured chests. Going, going, gone.Gestures like these tell us to look for other signs of Gorman’s presence: she is listed as co-designer of the book with Jim Hoover. She appends proper scholarly notes on borrowed phrases or other uses of source material, thus aligning her volume with culture-shaping predecessors like T.S. Eliot, who annotated his own The Waste Land. Like Eliot, she is staking a claim as “individual talent” engaged in altering the “tradition.” Much of the book is properly concerned with the Black experience in America, but there is much else to ponder: like Walt Whitman, Gorman contains multitudes. But in a capsule review like this one, we should hear directly from Amanda Gorman, in lines from her inaugural “The Hill We Climb,” and feel a surge of hope,even the ghost of a millenary belief in a promised earthly paradise: We lay down our arms So that we can reach our arms out to one another. We seek harm to none, and harmony for all. 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, Not because we will never again know defeat, But because we will never again sow division.I feel certain that if Emerson had lived in our time and absorbed our modern context, he would say to Gorman, as he did say to Whitman, that this is one of the finest pieces of wit and wisdom our country has yet known.

Purchased in November 2021, I also gifted a copy to a friend.This book of poetry is outstanding. The poems are deeply inspiring and relevant to our lives.Her initial work and subsequent writings will uplift the world for generations to come.

Very moving poetry.

Inspirational words

Gorman uses a variety of poetry styles to tell the history of America, specifically focusing on the resilience of African Americans and all who faced the pandemic.

A challenging but necessary read. I highly recommend this book. So well written.

A friend was gifted this book of poetry.

I love the unique shape and presentation of these poems. There is a poem entitled "Essex". This poem is presented in the shape of a whale. This poem is about a fateful 19th century whaling ship and the death of many men. There is another poem entitled "America" in the shape of the American flag. "Fury and Faith" is another poem that stands out. This poem reminds me that I have a right to be angry. Anger will give me the energy I need to complete my goal or destination. I can have both fury and faith in my heart. "Every Day We Are Learning" is another poem I love. This poem implores me to enjoy the essence of the activities of daily life and not to indulge in material objects. The themes and the power of Amanda Gorman's word choice are the most enlightening aspects of this book.I added three words to my vocabulary reading these poems. There is a poem entitled "Fugue". I didn't know the definition of this word before. I learned that a fugue is a loss of awareness or identity. I can certainly relate to the definition of this word because of my past failures. This poem is included in the group of poems grouped as requiem poems. I learned that a requiem is a poem of remembrance. There is a poem entitled "Augury or The Birds". I learned that an augur is a person in ancient Rome who determined the appropriateness of an action before it happened. The message of this poem is that the future is in my hands. I am inspired to write my own poetry again after learning how to use these three words. I love every aspect of "Call Us What We Carry" by Amanda Gorman.

Lots of thoughtful images…powerful when read aloud…lots of ”in-rhymes”, as in rapping monologues…recipient moved by it…good present…

Maybe it’s me, but I found her work quite hard to understand- which I wasn’t expecting after her powerful inauguration poem

She thought it was a good read

Beautiful, poignant poetry

Bought two copies for gifts, both really appreciated. Really great poetry.