The New Yorker Radio Hour - Amanda Gorman on Life After Inauguration

Episode Date: December 31, 2021

One year ago, Amanda Gorman delivered the inaugural poem on the day that Joe Biden became President. Gorman was just twenty-two years old, and it was just two weeks after Trump supporters had assaulted the Capitol in an effort to stop Congress from certifying the election. At the ceremony, Gorman herself seemed to cast light on a dark situation. Her poem “The Hill We Climb” reads, “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.” The New Yorker’s poetry editor, Kevin Young, wrote that her poem was “as vibrant and elegant as her yellow coat against the cold.” After that very public début, Gorman found the stakes of writing the poems for her new collection, “Call Us What We Carry,” to be impossibly high. (It was excerpted in The New Yorker with readings by Gorman.) She spoke with Young about being an inaugural poet—following in the footsteps of Maya Angelou and Elizabeth Alexander—in a conversation from The New Yorker’s Poetry Podcast. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Let me introduce Amanda Gorman, our nation's first ever... 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. Mr. President, Dr. President, Doctor. But he stepped to the podium, Madam Vice President.

But she stepped to the podium with remarkable presence and confidence. 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 in the norms and notions of business.

What's just is isn't always just is. 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. On December 6, 2021, the New Yorker published a sequence of poems from your book,

Call Us What We Carry, including Ships 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? I'm trying to think. All I would say before you kind of engage with it is when I wrote Ships Manifest, I originally wasn't necessarily writing it for readers. I was writing it for myself. It was my way to kind of fashion a thesis statement I could follow and create the rest of the book. And so 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. Here's Amanda Gorman reading her poem, Ships Manifest. Ships Manifest. Allegedly, the worst is behind us. Still, we crouch before the lip of tomorrow, halting like a headless haunt in our own house, waiting to remember exactly what it is

were supposed to be doing. And what exactly are we supposed to be doing? Penning a letter to the world as a daughter of it. We are writing with a 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 arc articulated, and the poet, the preserver of ghosts and gains, our demons and dreams, our haunts and hopes.

hears to the preservation of a light so terrible. 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. And 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? A hundred percent. I wanted to kind of 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 and time. I wanted to take that and kind of broaden it. So as opposed to one lyric, it becomes many, which are all kind of ruminating on the specific sociopolitical cultural. emotional considerations that are happening right now.

When I love how you put it, you say, this book is awake, as in wide awake, and then this book is awake. How are you balancing those themes throughout the book? 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. And so we have to look at the ghosts in order to kind of reconcile with the living. We have to think about

what we've lost to think about what we still have to gain. And so 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. In Ships Manifest, you have a that says, our greatest test will be our testimony. That hour, 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 hour in this poem and in the collection as a whole? Oh, that's interesting. Honestly, I think the hour 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 hour, 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 kind of stumbled upon that because most of the poems when I was first writing it, they were almost written with like multiple personality disorder the sentence would begin with i and then the thought would suddenly transition to we and i had this moment kind of 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. Well, it's a very commanding voice as well. I almost would say authoritative, and that's a compliment. I mean, 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?

When I was writing these types of declarations in the book, it wasn't out of a feeling of trying to sound confident. 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. And so 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. I love how you put that. Well, the new book starts with Ship Manifest as we you've said. It's a kind of pro-em 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. I will say almost every single poem in the collection, save for maybe two, were written after the hill we climb. And so 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. And so the reason that I put ships manifest at the beginning of the book and then the hillby climb at the tail end was I wanted to use, that moment that I'd had at the inauguration, not as kind of an end game or an end point, really,

but more so as a jumping off point. So I actually reread the hillby climb because I was writing this book and had no idea what to talk about. And I had no idea how to approach this huge, massive moment that we're living through. And I just started at the beginning of the hillby climb where I talk about braving the belly of the beast, the loss we carry. a sea we must wait. And so I took that idea of carrying in the sea and 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. And so now that I have the time and the space in the white pages, what was left and said that now can be unerased.

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. 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. And she followed in the footsteps of two other black female inaugural poets.

Maya Angelou in 1993 and Elizabeth Alexander in 2000. 2009. Gorman spoke with the New Yorker's poetry editor, Kevin Young. What was that like being faced with the White Page to write this poem? You know, how did you approach it as a poet? Writing this book? Oh, well, the book, but I also meant the hill we climb. Oh, the hill we climb, the hill we climb, got it, got it. That was so terrifying. And writing this book was so frightening. I mean, 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 kind of grand idea of the stakes that if I go up there and do poorly, it's not only kind of a shame for me,

but it's a shame kind of 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, and that was seen as representative of, my race or my gender or my age or my class. And at the same time, it was trying to write an inaugural poem while we had seen something such as the January 6th insurrection, which made the inauguration, I think, to many people feel untenable. Like, I didn't even expect the inauguration to happen

after that. So when writing, I try not to ignore all of those kind of 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. Well, it's such a rich tradition, but also it's such a tough one, as you would indicate. Did you have to keep it secret? Tell us about that process a little bit. So I would say either like December 31st or January 1st, it was like New Year's Day, I found out I was going to be the inaugural poet, danced around my apartment and my apartment

in my socks, probably looked crazy. And only a few people knew at the time, like, I waited a little bit and told my mom. And I mostly kept it secret because I was so afraid of failing. And I felt that the more I told people, the more I was kind of baiting my own luck. Also that in the inaugural committee was like, don't tell anybody until we announced it. So it was like both that and like waiting until that day and me being like, okay, I'll wait. but I'm telling my mom and I'm telling my dog, though 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 ministrations of hygiene. And 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 callus what we carry. It was almost like being possessed by something that wasn't myself, but it was myself, but greater. 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? Of the tradition that would emerge or the one I was coming from? Yes, both. Both. Well said. I like that. I was thinking of Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander, some of your predecessors who take the

Oh, come on, son. Of course, of course. I pray at the Holy Trinity that is My Angelou and Elizabeth Alexander. and, you know, the Phyllis Wheatley's, all these great black poetesses who have been called to write these exceptional, occasional poems. And so when I was writing The Hill We Climb, I did do a lot of, kind 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. And 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.

So 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 kind of 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. And so I wanted to add some more youth and warmth and vibrancy by using my hands, by wearing bright colors, by sewing up with Afro braids. So I love the tradition I was existing in, and I also wanted to expand it at the same time.

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. And can you tell us about that experience? Oh my gosh, full circle moment. Yeah, I was there. Oh, my gosh. A long, long time ago.

Wow, wow, wow. I remember that night and also it feels like 20 years ago. So 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. And 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. And it was just so staggering, and I still feel so grateful to have had that opportunity

because poetry is having, I really want to say, this renaissance, and 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 kind of older ones. Well, you've certainly borne that porch forward. And 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 sort of all these opportunities you alluded to with the poetry itself? Thank you for recognizing the difficulty by which this book was born. And 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 kind of 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 emotion. of this moment was so important. And it's something that I needed to read now. And 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 day in my house without going anywhere. All of those types of specificities of the existence, I wanted to capture quickly for the sake of their preservation. Do you think of it as testimony then? Is it a repository? You know, these are all words from ships manifest. Is that how you thought of it? Yeah, I think I thought of it as both a repository, which seems a bit kind of, I think, inactive because we put like time capsules in the earth. And 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 have

been asking, let's say, my great-grandmother, as she was still alive, about what it was like to go through the 1918 pandemic. So 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. And so I think that was one of the things that made the book most frightening to write that it felt like kind of 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. 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 mean, I see a lot of poetry in my job. But do you think people are wrestling with this? Do you see that out there? Oh, I mean, I would love to hear your perspective on this. I love the casual drop of, oh, you know, I see a little bit of poetry. in my job, okay, says poetry, editor. But 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. And 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. And so there's so many poetry books that I read whose tradition I'm very grateful to be participating in where they speak to that community, whether, you know, don't call us dead by Dinesse Smith or if they come for us by Fatima Ascar. Oh, or even on Earth or a briefly gorgeous Ocean Vong. These titles which speak to a we or an us or an hour. And 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. And we are reclaiming not just our time, but our shared humanity. Well, I'm really excited for folks to get their hands on this new book. I think it's really tremendous. And Amanda, thank you so much for talking with us today. Thank you so much for having me. Amanda Gorman talking with New Yorker poetry editor, Kevin Young. Kevin hosts our poetry podcast, and 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 new yorker.com. I'm David Remnick. Thanks so much for listening.

A happy new year to you, one of health and happiness. See you soon. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Cario, Riannon, Corby, Calalia, David Krasnau, Gauphin and Putuguele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino.

And we had additional help from Harrison Keith Lyme. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Trina Endowment Fund.