NEW YORK ā Amanda Gorman is ending her extraordinary year on a hopeful note.
The 23-year-old poet, whose reading of her own āThe Hill We Climbā at President Joe Biden's inauguration made her an international sensation, posted a new work and accompanying video Wednesday on Instagram to mark the end of 2021. āNew Day's Lyricā is a five-stanza, 48-line resolution with themes of struggle and healing known to admirers of āThe Hill We Climbā and of her bestselling collection āCall Us What We Carry,ā which came out in early December:
Recommended Videos
āWhat was cursed, we will cure.
What was plagued, we will prove pure.
Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree,
Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee,
Where we werenāt aware, weāre now awake;
Those moments we missed
Are now these moments we make,
The moments we meet,
And our hearts, once all together beaten,
Now all together beat."
Poets rarely enjoy the kind of attention Gorman received in 2021, but in an email to The Associated Press she reflected less on her own success than on the state of the country. Gorman wrote that the āchaos and instabilityā of the past year had made her reject the idea of going āback to normalā and instead fight to āmove beyond it.ā She mentioned Maya Angelou's poem āHuman Familyā and added, āTo be a family, a country, doesnāt necessitate that we be the same or agree on everything, only that we continue to try to see the best in each other and move forward into a shared future. Whether we like it or not, we are in this together.ā
Gorman offered an alliterative response when asked what inspired āNew Day's Lyric,ā telling the AP that she āwanted to write a lyric to honor the hardships, hurt, hope and healing of 2021 while also harkening the potential of 2022.ā
āThis is such a unique New Yearās Day, because even as we toast our glasses to the future, we still have our heads bowed for what has been lost," she wrote. "I think one of the most important things the new year reminds us is of that old adage: This too shall pass. You canāt relive the same day twice ā meaning every dawn is a new one, and every year an opportunity to step into the light.ā
In her Instagram post, Gorman urged readers to donate money to the International Rescue Committee (https://www.rescue.org) to help those affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Instagram's parent company, Meta, has pledged $50,000.