The text, while worth reading, is "incomplete" without her delivery. If you've not seen her speaking it I highly encourage you to do so -- her delivery was absolutely amazing.
As an aside, she apparently has a speech impediment, so had to rehearse the delivery quite a bit. There was a quote from her about how hard it was to rehearse that much while not sounding robotic.
> 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.
It doesn't make sense. (You can't be the successor of a country, you even more can't be the successor of the present instant happening right now.)
It's content-free, like a bad political speech. "We are striving to forge our union with purpose." As opposed to striving to forge it accidentally?
It's clichéd: "We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.... while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us." Honestly, this reads like something GPT-3 might come up with.
It uses rhyme for cheap effect: "We seek harm to none and harmony for all."
I expected something as bad as Maya Angelou (brutally reviewed by Paul Beatty at https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/books/review/black-humor....). This is worse. It is a shame, when there are black poets like Derek Walcott out there. People get exposed to this kind of "uplifting" stuff and will think that's all there is.
And yet, without any analysis, anyone I've talked to was moved by the poem, and thought it was the best part of the inauguration. I think the moment, the black young girl standing at the pulpit of power, the collective relief, the joy of seeing a female (black/asian) as VP, culminated in an emotional uplifting, which the words did not capture at 100%. It had meaning in the context of 4 years of trump, of 400 years of oppression, of a summer of outcry for justice. Reading later will leave you flat I think. I thought it was perfect for the moment.
What I find fascinating is how people so often have this impulse to tear down things that others hold in high regard. Impulse might even be an understatement - it's almost a need. I wonder why that is.
Ex:
- "vim sucks! why don't people use emacs instead?"
- "katy perry's music sucks!"
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Many liked it. Many did not - yourself included. That's okay. Art does not evoke the same response from everyone and we should not expect it to.
I'm with you. I saw the delivery, and at the time thought it so much easy bromide, soporific treacle. It's even worse now seeing the words on a page. I have an innate distrust of 22-year-old poets. What do they know of pain, loss, irrevocable breaking of things, and the compounding interests of their tolls over a longer span of life. Pretty sentiments, the simiplistic rhymes, and I could not even find a meter. Yesterday I was thinking of W. S. Merwin.
" ... it was then that you
saw him in his own exile and you
paid for him and kept him until he
could fly again and you let him go
but then where could he go in the world
of your time with its wars everywhere
and the soldiers hungry the fires lit
the knives out twelve hundred years ago."
Paul Beatty's essay was actually about his inability to appreciate Maya Angelou, and subsequently his inability to appreciate Black literature the way it's been framed in the white educational system.
"My journey to black literary insobriety isn't so different from how I came to appreciate free jazz after growing up in a house that contained two records, the soundtrack to "Enter the Dragon" and "Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan." It turns out that I enjoy never fully understanding what's in front of me, and I masochistically relish being offended while thinking about why I feel offended and if I should feel offended. I also live in Manhattan's East Village."
You're right. Reading this text without having heard it, it reads like a speech. The only thing that gives it the poetry sheen is the same tired slam poetry delivery that you can't escape now.
Your claim about successor fails, because, even ignoring the variance of meaning of the word successor, ‘of a country’ can simply be the implication that you are part of that country.
The union being forged with purpose seems more about there being a purpose instilled in the union and also ‘purpose’ as the raw material being forged.
The part you call cliché is perhaps not that deep, but fits within the expected patriotic idealism the poem invokes. It’s also good sonically.
The ‘cheap effect’ is just more concentrated youthful idealism, of the sort encoded in our founding documents and pledges.
Look, no offenses, but that's terrible and shallow criticism:
> You can't be the successor of a country,
The we to whom it is addressed constitute a country, and can certainly be collectively successors to the past state of that country
> you even more can't be the successor of the present instant happening right now
But the time it referenced began in the (close, but still) past from the time it was recited, and the emphasis on that as already a past that we are already successors to when we contemplate it fits quite well with the theme of continuous progress of the poem.
> It's content-free, like a bad political speech. "We are striving to forge our union with purpose." As opposed to striving to forge it accidentally?
No, striving for common direction instead of perfection (though putting it that way in a poem would be inexcusable); you need to stop reading sentences alone out of context: “...that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect. We are striving to forge our union with purpose.”
> It's clichéd: "We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.... while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us."
That’s a fairly specific reference, not cliché.
> It uses rhyme for cheap effect: "We seek harm to none and harmony for all."
That's...not using rhyme for cheap effect.
> It is a shame, when there are black poets like Derek Walcott out there
Kind of an odd alternative to hold out to a US inaugural poet, as Walcott is, while certainly Black (as now an absolute majority of such poets have been) both not-American and dead.
> I expected something as bad as Maya Angelou
Pretty much all the negative criticism of “On the Pulse of Morning" is of it as a decontextualized text, rather than in its actual role. And it take someone taking the same approach to Gorman’s work and blindly expecting everyone else to do the same to even begin to think the sentence the phrase “as bad as Maya Angelou” is something that could even sensibly be used, non-ironically, in this context.
> brutally reviewed by Paul Beatty
That isn't a review, of a throw away statement of distaste for a work. Which isn't the same thing.
> People get exposed to this kind of "uplifting" stuff and will think that's all there is.
While it is certainly not a requirement for poetry to be either targeted at a broad audience or uplifting, any art has a context and intended audience, and inaugural poetry is a pretty specialized niche where both breadth of appeal and uplifting character are, usually, things that makes sense. Having more depth than just that is, of courses, to be hoped for, but Gorman’s piece did.
I have written a commentary on this poem, that critiques it several lines at a time. I wrote this before knowing about this web site or this thread, so I may repeat some of the criticism provided here. The critique is 9 pages long, although this exaggerates its true length. There is plenty of white space in the document. Because it is so long, I assume it would be inappropriate for me to dump it into a thread entry, so I am providing a link to a PDF file on my Google Drive account. I hope this does not contravene any rules of the web site (I looked, but could not find any guidance on this). I would welcome any feedback you have to give. The link is: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18vVqYMs3dj6jMhAn1r7zmElly1B....
You can likely tweet or email her directly to request a merchandise store. She may already be close to opening one and can share the good news with you!
You started a wretched flamewar with this comment, which broke the site guidelines badly and predictably led to worse. Then you perpetuated it. This is criminal negligence if not arson, and we ban accounts for this kind of thing—especially now, after the hellfires this site went through in the last couple of weeks. We've raised the bar and are banning more accounts for abusing the site this way. I'm not going to ban you because your comment history shows that you've mostly been commenting about other things. But please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, keep the intended spirit of the site in mind, and don't do it again.
I think a lot of people are more interesting in helping the half of the country that supported Trump and QAnon walk itself back from the crazy positions they've talked themselves into so we can sit back down at the table and get through dinner.
> Seems like a pretty thinly veiled swipe at Trump to be honest.
Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. But if you don't think that guy (not even gonna use his name) deserves some serious criticism after the last 4 years and especially after the events of 1/6/2021... well, I'm just not sure here's any way to reach you.
Politely, who the heck would write, much less put in the practice of reciting, a several minutes-long poem for a thinly veiled swipe at a political figure? Amanda could've just spat out a hot take on twitter if she wanted that, same as everyone else who wants to make swipes.
[+] [-] fullstop|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] felixr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aidenn0|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dash2|5 years ago|reply
It's verbose:
> 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.
It doesn't make sense. (You can't be the successor of a country, you even more can't be the successor of the present instant happening right now.)
It's content-free, like a bad political speech. "We are striving to forge our union with purpose." As opposed to striving to forge it accidentally?
It's clichéd: "We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.... while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us." Honestly, this reads like something GPT-3 might come up with.
It uses rhyme for cheap effect: "We seek harm to none and harmony for all."
I expected something as bad as Maya Angelou (brutally reviewed by Paul Beatty at https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/books/review/black-humor....). This is worse. It is a shame, when there are black poets like Derek Walcott out there. People get exposed to this kind of "uplifting" stuff and will think that's all there is.
[+] [-] williamaadams|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eachro|5 years ago|reply
Ex:
- "vim sucks! why don't people use emacs instead?"
- "katy perry's music sucks!"
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Many liked it. Many did not - yourself included. That's okay. Art does not evoke the same response from everyone and we should not expect it to.
[+] [-] UncleOxidant|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devchix|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeaDrunk|5 years ago|reply
"My journey to black literary insobriety isn't so different from how I came to appreciate free jazz after growing up in a house that contained two records, the soundtrack to "Enter the Dragon" and "Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan." It turns out that I enjoy never fully understanding what's in front of me, and I masochistically relish being offended while thinking about why I feel offended and if I should feel offended. I also live in Manhattan's East Village."
[+] [-] alistoriv|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antiterra|5 years ago|reply
The union being forged with purpose seems more about there being a purpose instilled in the union and also ‘purpose’ as the raw material being forged.
The part you call cliché is perhaps not that deep, but fits within the expected patriotic idealism the poem invokes. It’s also good sonically.
The ‘cheap effect’ is just more concentrated youthful idealism, of the sort encoded in our founding documents and pledges.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|5 years ago|reply
> You can't be the successor of a country,
The we to whom it is addressed constitute a country, and can certainly be collectively successors to the past state of that country
> you even more can't be the successor of the present instant happening right now
But the time it referenced began in the (close, but still) past from the time it was recited, and the emphasis on that as already a past that we are already successors to when we contemplate it fits quite well with the theme of continuous progress of the poem.
> It's content-free, like a bad political speech. "We are striving to forge our union with purpose." As opposed to striving to forge it accidentally?
No, striving for common direction instead of perfection (though putting it that way in a poem would be inexcusable); you need to stop reading sentences alone out of context: “...that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect. We are striving to forge our union with purpose.”
> It's clichéd: "We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.... while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us."
That’s a fairly specific reference, not cliché.
> It uses rhyme for cheap effect: "We seek harm to none and harmony for all."
That's...not using rhyme for cheap effect.
> It is a shame, when there are black poets like Derek Walcott out there
Kind of an odd alternative to hold out to a US inaugural poet, as Walcott is, while certainly Black (as now an absolute majority of such poets have been) both not-American and dead.
> I expected something as bad as Maya Angelou
Pretty much all the negative criticism of “On the Pulse of Morning" is of it as a decontextualized text, rather than in its actual role. And it take someone taking the same approach to Gorman’s work and blindly expecting everyone else to do the same to even begin to think the sentence the phrase “as bad as Maya Angelou” is something that could even sensibly be used, non-ironically, in this context.
> brutally reviewed by Paul Beatty
That isn't a review, of a throw away statement of distaste for a work. Which isn't the same thing.
> People get exposed to this kind of "uplifting" stuff and will think that's all there is.
While it is certainly not a requirement for poetry to be either targeted at a broad audience or uplifting, any art has a context and intended audience, and inaugural poetry is a pretty specialized niche where both breadth of appeal and uplifting character are, usually, things that makes sense. Having more depth than just that is, of courses, to be hoped for, but Gorman’s piece did.
[+] [-] davidivadavid|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] war1025|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dnessett|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rektide|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbredeche|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeaDrunk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcguire|5 years ago|reply
Um,...?
[+] [-] x3n0ph3n3|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pnathan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] war1025|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] war1025|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexilliamson|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jefurii|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] UncleOxidant|5 years ago|reply
Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. But if you don't think that guy (not even gonna use his name) deserves some serious criticism after the last 4 years and especially after the events of 1/6/2021... well, I'm just not sure here's any way to reach you.
[+] [-] andybak|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeaDrunk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisClark|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sorry1but|5 years ago|reply
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