Some friends and I have a running argument about Amanda Gorman, the young poet who read at Joe Biden’s inauguration. Gorman, they say, is not exactly a great poet. “The Hill We Climb,” the poem she read at the National Mall before thousands of spectators and millions of viewers, is awkward and cloying. They’re not wrong. Yet that assessment misses what made Gorman’s performance remarkable. I choose the word “performance” deliberately, for that is what it was. Gorman performed the role of poet, of a voice for a massive public, with aplomb. In a firm, soaring voice, she recited a poem that hit the exact emotional register the public longed for. She understood the assignment, as they say on the internet. Indeed, the plain, even banal language of the poem enabled her to communicate that emotional experience to such a wide audience.
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