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Amanda Gorman's “The Hill We Climb” (Full Text)
- fullstop 6y agoThe 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.
- aidenn0 6y agoAs 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.
- carlmr 6y agoIt was an amazing delivery, i never even thought that she could have a speech impediment.
- lovegoblin 6y agoIt's not much an aside - Biden did, too.
- felixr 6y agoI agree. Definitely worth listening to. Here is a link to the video: https://youtu.be/2mTmTdOgv0M https://youtu.be/2mTmTdOgv0M
- mcguire 6y ago"*And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect." Um,...?
- war1025 6y agoI have to imagine that's just a typo, but who knows.
- andyjohnson0 6y agoListening to her recitation at [1] she does appear to say "we are striving". It might be a simple slip, or she could be saying that the objective is purpose not perfection. I tend to think it's the latter. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-55739805 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-55739805 - at about 1:12
- x3n0ph3n3 6y agoWhy are you confused? "We're not perfect, but we're not trying to be perfect."
- jakeva 6y agoThat's how I understood it
- avmich 6y ago"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,[note 1] promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
- carlmr 6y agoMore perfect implies imperfection, just less of it.
- valbaca 6y agomore perfect does not imply 'perfect' is the goal nor should it be. "More perfect" in this context is effectively "better." Perfectionism, ironically, stunts improvements.
- WorldMaker 6y agoI think that it is intentional to underscore that "more perfect" != "perfect". The founders that wrote that document did not believe the Constitution was perfect, they knew it a part of process towards perfect, while it might imply perfect is an end goal it also doesn't necessarily say that.
- pnathan 6y ago"perfect being enemy of good" is what I thought of.
- jbredeche 6y agoIf someone made a poster with this poem, or excerpts from the poem, on it - I would buy one. Probably some copyright issues though.
- war1025 6y agoSeems like a pretty thinly veiled swipe at Trump to be honest. Really looking forward to the next four years of "Isn't it great how we're all united in the common cause of hating half the country"
- TeaDrunk 6y agoPolitely, 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.
- war1025 6y ago> When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade? > The loss we carry. A sea we must wade. > We braved the belly of the beast. > We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice. ... > 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. .. > This is the era of just redemption. "Era of redemption." Gee, I'm sure looking forward to it.
- x3n0ph3n3 6y agoCorrection, I think you've misinterpreted: > We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what “just is” isn’t always justice.
- TeaDrunk 6y agoAnd I think presuming it's nothing more than a swipe makes no sense, occam's razor style. There's no reason why she would put that much effort (a several minutes long poem, plus the practice of recital).
- 6y ago
- rektide 6y agoKEXP had some good background jams to her reading last night. I forgot to go look at their playlist, see what it was. Anyone perhaps run across it?
- dash2 6y agoLook, no offence, but this is a terrible poem. 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.html 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.
- UncleOxidant 6y agoWas gonna try to refute you... but I can't even. It's poetry. Most of us loved it. Especially her delivery of it.
- dash2 6y agoMmm. Consider it possible that I'm right? Not everything that sounds good stands up in the cold harsh light of criticism. Or as a great poet once put it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6hzkBihaew https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6hzkBihaew): "Do you remember Rick Astley? He had a big fat hit, it was ghastly." Update: heh, my fastest-downvoted comment. Yup, I'm definitely right.
- UncleOxidant 6y agoNo, it's not that you're "right". It's that your techbro-ism is showing. Not a good look.
- dnessett 6y agoI 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/18vVqYMs3dj6jMhAn1r7zmElly1B435Pl/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/18vVqYMs3dj6jMhAn1r7zmElly1B....
- sorry1but 6y agoThe poem itself imo was just plain bad unfortunately - great delivery, great outfit, important topics in the poem. But the poem: really not good.