★★★★☆ I wish I could be this optimistic...

The Hill We Climb

Amanda Gorman

I read this, of course, thanks to the Florida blockhead who tried to have it banned from school libraries, and succeeded so far as to have it made inaccessible to the youngest students. (I have no patience with this compromise -- at the age of six I was reading books that the Florida school board who took this action surely believed were not appropriate for six-year-olds.) Well, we all know that banned books deserve a look, so I read it.

I read the poem first, then went back and read the Oprah Winfrey Foreword, because I wanted to experience the poem without Oprah telling me in advance what to think of it. In the event, the Foreword is not terrible. It is merely vacuous, but not horribly officious.

The poem itself is lovely, although it plods in places.

I wish I could say I believed what Amanda Gorman has to say, She tells us

Somehow, we’ve weathered and witnessed
A nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.

I wish I agreed that we are not broken. I do not -- that is why I, an American citizen, recently became a permanent resident of Canada. Later she sings

That we’ll forever be tied together. Victorious,
Not because we will never again know defeat,
But because we will never again sow division.

Alas, I do not believe a word of this.

Thank you, Ms Salinas for pointing me at this fine poem.

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