Amanda Gorman.Photo: Charley Gallay/Getty Images
Gorman will be the youngest known poet in memory to speak at the swearing-in ceremony, according tothe Associated Press. The Biden transition announced Thursday that the already-accomplished Harvard University grad is scheduled to do a five-minute reading.
“The poem isn’t blind,” Gorman told the AP, noting the poem she had been writing for Wednesday will also touch on last week’s deadlyriot in the U.S. Capitol building.
“It isn’t turning your back to the evidence of discord and division,” she said, though the poem will still focus on unity and hope - two points the Biden inaugural team asked the young poet to expand on.
Amanda Gorman.Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
Amanda Gorman.nbc
According to the literary organization, only three presidents have had a poet read at their swearing-in ceremony: PresidentJohn F. Kennedyin 1961, PresidentBill Clintonin 1993 and 1997, and PresidentBarack Obama2009 and 2013. Gorman will add her name to that list, which includes Maya Angelou and Robert Frost.
Angelou’s 1993 poem “On the Pulse of Morning,” read at Clinton’s first inauguration, went on to sell 1 million copies, according to the AP.
Richard Blanco, the poet who read “One Today” at Obama’s 2013 inauguration,offered his congratulationsto Gorman via Twitter.
“So proud of you,” he wrote. “I cannot wait to watch you read your inaugural poem!”
Gormanaddedthat she’s “so honored to follow in [Blanco’s] sizable footsteps.”
Her poem will be titled “The Hill We Climb,” Gorman told the AP, adding that last week’s pro-Donald Trump mob at the Capitol had, in part, inspired her to finish the work.
“That day gave me a second wave of energy to finish the poem,” Gorman said.
source: people.com
