I had gotten out of the habit of reading poetry with these months, but this time around it occurred to me to read through Amanda Gorman.
Now, if I look at her Wikipedia entry there is some other work listed, but this was all I could find in books:
The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country
Call Us What We Carry: Poems
Something, Someday (illustrated by Christian Robinson)
Change Sings: A Children's Anthem (illustrated by Loren Long)
I suspect that her other work may have appeared in literary magazines and student publications, so may not be too easy to locate.
What I found I enjoyed a lot.
I want to focus on Call Us What We Carry.
If felt very much like a part of student work, but not because of the quality level. The quality was amazing.
As it was, the different sections played with different formats, and there were classical allusions but also bits of history and science. It reminded me of that mix of being a college student with so much information available all around you.
It was invigorating.
At the same time, it was a record of the pandemic, and the grief and fear that went with that.
It was emotional, and I felt that, but then what stuck with me was the ability to pull from so many sources and combine them into new, interesting, and evocative forms.
Gorman is incredibly skilled and so young that it is wonderful to think that we could have her and new work from her for many years.
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