Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division. That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious. ( The globe? The world, surely? And let’s lose the full stop so the next line follows.) Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true. We seek harm to none and harmony for all. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.

We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man.Īnd so we lift our gaze, not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. ( Shouldn’t it be a comma, to make sense of the next infinitive, ‘to compose…’?) We are striving to forge our union with purpose. ( What’s with the ‘but’ here? Maybe ‘for we are not striving’? Dunno.) Sorry.)Īnd, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect. But following on from the ‘We, the successors…’ it doesn’t. But where does the ‘We’ that begins the line go in search of a verb? If the sentence began with ‘a skinny black girl…can dream of becoming president, only to find herself…’ it could sort of work. We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one. ( Alliteration – ‘weathered and witnessed’ – doesn’t mean the two verbs make sense or work together) Somehow we weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished. We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what ‘just’ is isn’t always justice.Īnd yet the dawn is ours before we knew it. A sea we must wade’ follow from the first line about finding light, unless it’s simply to make ‘wade’ rhyme with ‘shade’?) ‘When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade? Here’s the text, with a few comments interspersed:

But let me show you a little of what I mean. I may be wrong, of course, and wilfully dim.

But trying to make the whole thing cohere, structurally and grammatically – and in terms of sense – was another matter. I mean, I got bits of it, I got the sentiment, I got the stream of consciousness, the emotion, I got the sub-Martin Luther King flow. Without pretending to be in the FR and Queenie Leavis league when it comes to literary sensibility, I couldn’t make sense of it. The pundits are united in their view that a Star Is Born Michelle Obama has given her imprimatur ditto Oprah.Īmanda was given the theme of America United. She stole the show with her style and poise – fabulous look, tremendous assurance. Congratulations to Amanda Gorman, who is, at 22, the youngest ever poet for the inauguration of a US president.

Amanda gorman's poem the hill we climb