Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, her poems shine a light on a moment of reckoning and reveal that Gorman has become a messenger from the past, our voice for the future. The final poem in the book is The hill we climb, which was read at President Joseph Biden's 2021 inauguration. -- adapted from jacket and perusal of book