The Poem
You know the one I mean. The one Amanda Gorman read at Biden’s inauguration and has since parlayed into book deals, fashion shoots and lavish endorsements. This poem is now being translated into Dutch and Portuguese and probably a score languages I have never even heard of. As a son of the shrewd peasantry I object to none of this. Make hay while the sun shines is my motto. Nor do I object to anyone making a living. Is it a good poem though? Not to my ears unless hills are ‘golden limbed’ in a way I can’t quite picture. ‘We are striving to forge a union with purpose/To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man” is the kind clunky sentence I am continually crossing out of student essays. Nor is this use of ‘man’ as a generic pronoun now standard. “Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true: That even as we grieved, we grew/ That even as we hurt, we hoped /That e...