There hasn't been much to inspire us about the constant doom and gloom of the past four years, but after witnessing 22-year-old National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman's words during today's history-making inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, we're suddenly reinvigorated.
\u201cAmanda Gorman\u2019s message serves as an inspiration to us all. #InaugurationDay\u201d— Stacey Abrams (@Stacey Abrams) 1611164512
The youngest poet to speak at a presidential inauguration in U.S. history, the Harvard alum is one of only a handful of poets who have performed at the prestigious ceremony where the President and Vice President get sworn into office, the likes of which include literary giants like Maya Angelou and Robert Frost.
"In my poem, I’m not going to in any way gloss over what we’ve seen over the past few weeks and, dare I say, the past few years," Gorman told the New York Times before taking the stage at the U.S. Capitol about what she hopes to accomplish by speaking at the inauguration. "But what I really aspire to do in the poem is to be able to use my words to envision a way in which our country can still come together and can still heal. It’s doing that in a way that is not erasing or neglecting the harsh truths I think America needs to reconcile with.”
And inspire America, she did.
"We will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one," Amanda said in her piece. "There is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it."
She then continued:
"We've seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it,
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
And this effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed,
It can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth, in this faith, we trust.
For while we have our eyes on the future,
history has its eyes on us."
For good reason, America is starting to take notice of Amanda's brilliance. Before her performance, she had 24,000+ followers on her Twitter account, but following the inauguration, her follower count quickly skyrocketed to nearly 420,000+ at the time of writing.
\u201cThx @Lin_Manuel ! Did you catch the 2 @HamiltonMusical references in the inaugural poem? I couldn\u2019t help myself!\u201d— Amanda Gorman (@Amanda Gorman) 1611165204
\u201c"There is always light. If only we\u2019re brave enough to see it. If only we\u2019re brave enough to be it." \u2014 Amanda Gorman\u201d— Dan Savage (@Dan Savage) 1611165492
\u201cExtraordinary. @TheAmandaGorman\u201d— dan levy (@dan levy) 1611163592
Watch Amanda Gorman's full Inauguration Day poetry performance in the video below!
\u201cFull video: Inaugural poet Amanda Gorman\u201d— Maddow Blog (@Maddow Blog) 1611163773
