Senator Roy Blunt: Let me introduce Amanda Gorman, our nation's first-ever--

David Remnick: Most of us became acquainted with the poet Amanda Gorman one year ago when she delivered the inaugural poem on the day that Joe Biden became president. Gorman at the time was just 22 years old.

[applause]

Amanda Gorman: Mr. President, Dr. Biden, Madam Vice President, Mr. Emhoff, Americans-

David: She stepped to the podium with remarkable presence and confidence.

Amanda: -and the world.

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,

and the norms and notions

of what just is

isn't always just-ice.

David: It was just two weeks after Trump supporters had assaulted the Capitol in an effort to stop Congress from certifying the election, and yet Gorman herself seemed to cast light on a very dark situation. The New Yorker's poetry editor, Kevin Young, wrote that her poem was as vibrant and elegant as her yellow coat against the cold. Amanda Gorman has just published a new collection of poems, mostly written after that very public debut. She spoke recently with Kevin Young.

Kevin Young: On December 6th, 2021, The New Yorker published a sequence of poems from your book, Call Us What We Carry, including Ship's Manifest, which you'll read for us momentarily. Is there anything you like to tell us about the poem first? Anything listeners might need to know?

Amanda: I'm trying to think. All I would say before you engage with it is when I wrote Ship's Manifest, I originally wasn't necessarily writing it for readers, I was writing it for myself. It was my way to fashion a thesis statement I could follow and create the rest of the book. It more so was my own manifesto, my own type of declaration of what I was setting out to do. Whether or not I would succeed was still up for grabs, but I still wanted to have a moment where I could try to synthesize that which I would attempt.

Kevin: Here's Amanda Gorman reading her poem, Ship's Manifest.

Amanda: Ship's Manifest.

Allegedly the worst is behind us.

Still, we crouch before the lip of tomorrow,

Halting like a headless hant in our own house,

Waiting to remember exactly

What it is we're supposed to be doing.

& what exactly are we supposed to be doing?

Penning a letter to the world as a daughter of it.

We are writing with vanishing meaning,

Our words water dragging down a windshield.

The poet's diagnosis is that what we have lived

Has already warped itself into a fever dream,

The contours of its shape stripped from the murky mind.

To be accountable we must render an account:

Not what was said, but what was meant.

Not the fact, but what was felt.

What was known, even while unnamed.

Our greatest test will be

Our testimony.

This book is a message in a bottle.

This book is a letter.

This book does not let up.

This book is awake.

This book is a wake.

For what is a record but a reckoning?

The capsule captured?

A repository.

An ark articulated?

& the poet, the preserver

Of ghosts & gains,

Our demons & dreams,

Our haunts & hopes.

Here's to the preservation

Of a light so terrible.

Kevin: I love this poem as one you picked because it's part of the sequence we're running from Call Us What We Carry, but it's also, I think, a manifest about our time and thinking about it in broad ways. I wondered how much you were thinking about our time, which I think courses through the whole book, but specifically in this poem. Is that what you were thinking about is this current moment?

Amanda: 100%. I wanted to write what I might call an occasional book. Often as poets, we think of occasional poems, so these types of pieces which are written for specific cultural moments or periods in time, I wanted to take that and broaden it. As opposed to one lyric, it becomes many, which are all ruminating on the specific sociopolitical, cultural, emotional considerations that are happening right now.

Kevin: Well, I love how you put it. You say this book is awake as in wide awake, and then this book is a wake. How are you balancing those themes throughout the book?

Amanda: Well, I think, for me, it's recognizing that being awake, meaning having your eyes open and recognizing the wake, meaning the death and the loss aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, I think they're entirely codependent on each other. We have to look at the ghost in order to reconcile with the living. We have to think about what we've lost to think about what we still have to gain. Instead of trying to balance those two ideas for me, it's trying to give them as much of a full arena by which to engage with each other.

Kevin: In Ship's Manifest, you have a line that says, "Our greatest test will be our testimony." That "our," tell me about that because you've written about trying to think about the broadest American "we," let's call it. How are you thinking about this "we," this "our" in this poem and in the collection as a whole?

Amanda: Oh, that's interesting. Honestly, I think the "our" shifts in many different periods of the book and it encapsulates everybody, and then sometimes it might not even attempt to do so. I think with my "our," it is a word that has to get used over several hundred pages as opposed to single poem, which means, by definition, it is multifaceted. By definition, it is ever-changing and never stable. I stumbled upon that because most of the poems when I was first writing it, they were almost written with multiple personality disorder.

The sentence would begin with "I," and then the thought would suddenly transition to "we." I had this moment halfway through writing the book where I said, "Well, this 'I' that I'm writing from, which is me, is actually a contingent of the 'we,'" which is why the book speaks with such a pluralistic voice. I was discovering as I wrote that every kind of pain and onus that I was writing about was actually, in part, owned by someone else as well, that it wasn't my own singularly, but it was a collective type of experience.

Kevin: Well, it's a very commanding voice as well. I almost would say authoritative. That's a compliment. I think it's able to say these large things about the "we" in ways that people don't always do in poetry now. Did you have any caution there or was that just how it came out and you had no choice?

Amanda: When I was writing these types of declarations in the book, it wasn't out of a feeling of trying to sound confident, though I'm glad that that's how it comes off. I think it actually comes from a deep place of questioning and of doubt, which is why I think so many of the lines in the poem are actually questions just without a question mark. If parts sound confident, I think it's because they've come out of those moments of deep self-inquiry. When you've hit such a deep abyss of doubt, I think as an individual and as a people, you start to look for those types of stones or pillars that we know to be true.

Kevin: I love how you put that. Well, the new book starts with Ship's Manifest, as we've said, it's a kind of prom or preamble to the book, but it ends with The Hill We Climb, this poem that you grace the inaugural stage with ends the book. Tell us about that journey.

Amanda: I will say almost every single poem in the collection, say, for maybe two were written after The Hill We Climb. They weren't just written in a specific pandemic, cultural moment, but it was written in a specific moment of my own life in which I was trying to continue my poetry and my craft while living a life that was a lot more visible and, in many ways, a lot more demanding and busy than something I had ever experienced before.

The reason that I put Ship's Manifest at the beginning of the book and then The Hill We Climb at the tail end was I wanted to use that moment that I'd had at the inauguration, not as an endgame or an endpoint really but more so as a jumping-off point. I actually reread The Hill We Climb because I was writing this book and had no idea what to talk about. I had no idea how to approach this huge, massive moment that we're living through.

I just started at the beginning of The Hill We Climb, where I talk about braving the belly of the beast, the loss we carry, a sea we must wade, and so I took that idea of carrying in the sea in ships and beast to become an overarching motif in the book because I wanted it to be a moment by which we could venture out and explore all of those other aspects that were left unsaid in The Hill We Climb. Now that I have the time and the space and the white pages, what was left unsaid that now can be unerased.

[music]

David: That's poet Amanda Gorman talking about her new collection Call Us What We Carry. Her conversation with poetry editor Kevin Young will continue in a moment. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come.

[music]

David: This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Now, we've been hearing from Amanda Gorman who, one year ago, became the youngest inaugural poet ever. She followed in the footsteps of two other Black female inaugural poets, Maya Angelou in 1993 and Elizabeth Alexander in 2009. Gorman spoke with The New Yorker's poetry editor Kevin Young.

Kevin: What was that like being faced with the white page to write this poem? How did you approach it as a poet?

Amanda: Writing this book?

Kevin: Oh, well, the book, but I also meant The Hill We Climb.

Amanda: Oh, The Hill We Climb, got it. That was so terrifying. Writing this book was so frightening. Every single day, I was faced with so much doubt, especially I think with The Hill We Climb. In my head, I was living with this grand idea of the stakes that if I go up there and do poorly, it's not only a shame for me, but it's a shame on my country. It's a shame because how often after me would there be a young poet of color selected if I did poorly. That was seen as representative of my race or my gender or my age or my class.

At the same time, it was trying to write an inaugural poem while we had seen something such as the January 6 insurrection, which made the inauguration, I think, to many people feel untenable like I didn't even expect the inauguration to happen after that. When writing, I try not to ignore all of those shadows and demons dancing around me but actually to play with them and to nod at them and speak to them and let that be one of the undercurrent voices of the poem.

Kevin: Well, it's such a rich tradition, but also it's such a tough one as you indicate. Did you have to keep it secret? Tell us about that process a little bit.

Amanda: I want to say either December 31st or January 1st, it was New Year's Day, I found out I was going to be the inaugural poet, danced around my apartment in my socks, probably looked crazy. Only a few people knew at the time. I waited a little bit and told my mom. I mostly kept it secret because I was so afraid of failing. I felt that the more I told people, the more I was baiting my own luck.

Also that in the inaugural committee, I was like, "Don't tell anybody," until we announced it. It was like both that and waiting until that day me being like, "Okay, I'll wait, but I'm telling my mom and I'm telling my dog that she doesn't know what I'm saying, but I will say in the week that I was writing it because it took around six or seven days. Whenever my friends would text me or call, I'd be like, "I am sorry," but I cannot interact with human beings at that time.

It was almost like a fever. It was almost like being sick, forgetting to eat, reminding myself to do the basic administrations of hygiene. I wish I could say that that is a unique experience to this poem, but I can say that was what it was like writing the entirety of Call Us What We Carry. It was almost like being possessed by something that wasn't myself, but it was myself but greater.

Kevin: [chuckles] That's an amazing week and it certainly has resonated from the stage and beyond. It's such a powerful poem. It's also such a summation of many traditions, the inaugural tradition, but also that tradition has emerged as a powerful Black women poet tradition. Were you aware of that when you were writing?

Amanda: Of the tradition that would emerge or the one I was coming from?

Kevin: Yes, both.

[laughter]

Kevin: Well said. I like that. I was thinking of Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander, some of your predecessors who've--

Amanda: Oh, come on, son. Of course, I pray at the Holy Trinity that is Maya Angelou and Elizabeth Alexander and the Phillis Wheatleys, all these great Black poetesses who have been called to write these exceptional occasional poems. When I was writing The Hill We Climb, I did do a lot of, basically, a lit review of inaugural poems. There haven't been that many because it's pretty much so a modern tradition, which makes it all the more thrilling.

To see if this is the kind of heritage that I'm existing in, how do I both fit and also change this very same legacy that I'm existing in? That's why I think I was a bit more decisive of doing things like using my hands, which is I think an important part of my own self-performance. I was nervous because I hadn't seen anyone else do it in that way on that stage. We tend to think of the inauguration as a bit more formal, a bit more masculine, and even I'd say sometimes a bit more cold. I wanted to add some more youth and warmth and vibrancy by using my hands, by wearing bright colors, by showing up with Afro braids. I love the tradition I was existing in and I also wanted to expand it at the same time.

Kevin: Terrific. I want to ask a little bit about you becoming a poet. You got named the Youth Poet Laureate in 2017, a ceremony I was at actually. Can you tell us about that experience?

Amanda: Oh my gosh, full-circle moment.

Kevin: [chuckles] Yes, I was there.

Amanda: Oh my gosh, a long, long time ago, wow, wow, wow. I remember that night, and also it feels like 20 years ago. To answer your great question, I started writing pretty young. I want to say maybe five or six. It wasn't good, it wasn't legible, and it wasn't articulate, kept writing, had some phenomenal English teachers, which I feel like so many of us are fortunate to have. When I was in high school and had been writing poetry for several years, there was an opportunity to apply to be the inaugural Youth Poet Laureate of Los Angeles.

It was an initiative that was spearheaded by the great nonprofit Urban Word or the National Youth Poet Laureate program, and so I applied, sent into poems, and I was fortunate enough to receive that title later to receive a title of Youth Poet Laureate of the West and then to be selected as the inaugural Youth Poet Laureate of the United States. It was just so staggering. I still feel so grateful to have had that opportunity because poetry is having, I really want to say, this Renaissance. If it's going to continue and thrive, then young people have to have just as much of a microphone in the institutions that we hold most dear in literature as the older ones.

Kevin: Well, you've certainly worn that torch forward. This recent book, I feel like you put it well. You said you're trying to write an occasional book, but it occurs to me that you wrote it in record time. How do you balance all these opportunities you alluded to with the poetry itself?

Amanda: Thank you for recognizing. [chuckles] The difficulty by which this book was born. I will say to anyone listening, never attempt to write a book in three and a half months. Just don't do it to yourself. Don't do it to your body. Don't do it to your team. Don't do it to your computer. It was a book that was produced in a fever. I'm trying to even think of a more precise word to use, but that's the only thing I know. Almost like a fever dream because I wanted to write it so urgently because I thought that the task of capturing the emotionality of this moment was so important.

It's something that I needed to read now. I felt like others would hopefully appreciate reading now that it wasn't something that could wait or be delayed that with every passing day, there was more pressing emergency status of telling our stories, documenting what we're going through if not for ourselves, then for the generations that would follow. I didn't want to look up and have forgotten what the sunlight looked like at the inauguration or what it felt like to spend another five straight days in my house without going anywhere. All of those types of specificities of the existence, I wanted to capture quickly for the sake of the preservation.

Kevin: Do you think of it as testimony then? Is it a repository? These are all words from Ship's Manifest. Is that how you thought of it?

Amanda: Yes, I think I thought of it as both a repository, which seems a bit kind of, I think, inactive because we put time capsules in the earth. I also thought of it as a testimony, which felt a bit more active and defensive in my case. As I was writing it, I literally was imagining the questions that I would've been asking. Let's say my great-grandmother as she was still alive about what it was like to go through the 1918 pandemic.

I was thinking that although they have yet to be born, next-generation still have questions. They still have an interrogation that they have every right to have had about why they will have inherited the earth, the planet, the society that will come to them. I think that was one of the things that made the book most frightening to write that it felt like taking the witness stand and giving my testimony. You have to answer for yourself because there has to be a voice that is recording what occurred.

Kevin: It's hard to top that, but I wondered about how you see poetry more broadly. Do you think poetry more broadly is thinking about these things? I see a lot of poetry in my job, but do you think people are wrestling with this? Do you see that out there?

Amanda: Oh, I would love to hear your perspective on this. I love the casual drop of, "Oh, I see a little bit of poetry in my job, okay," says poetry editor. I absolutely think so. I think that poetry is not only experiencing a Renaissance. That is to say like a rebirth, but that this birth is different, that we're changing. We're transforming. We're metamorphosizing. I think there also has been a larger type of movement to try to experiment with how it feels yet again to speak with a plural collective voice.

There are so many poetry books that I read whose tradition I'm very grateful to be participating in where they speak to that community. Whether Don't Call Us Dead by Danez Smith or If They Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar, oh, or even On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong, these titles which speak to a "we" or an "us" or an "our." I think that's so exciting because the people who are doing that type of plural speak are those who for so long were left out of the plural. It's people of color. It's queer people. It's Indigenous people who are saying, "We belong in the 'we' as much as anybody." We are reclaiming not just our time, but our shared humanity.

Kevin: Well, I'm really excited for folks to get their hands on this new book. I think it's really tremendous. Amanda, thank you so much for talking with us today.

Amanda: Thank you so much for having me.

[music]

David: Amanda Gorman talking with New Yorker poetry editor Kevin Young. Kevin hosts our poetry podcast. In his spare time, he's the director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. You can hear Amanda Gorman read more from her book Call Us What We Carry at newyorker.com.

[music]

 

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