Call us what we carry : poems

First Title Value for Searching:

Personal Author:

Gorman, Amanda, 1998-

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

228 pages ; 22 cm.

Genre:

Young adult poetry, American.

Poetry.

Summary:

Formerly titled The Hill We Climb and Other Poems, the luminous poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing. In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, these poems shine a light on a moment of reckoning and reveal that Gorman has become our messenger from the past, our voice for the future.

Contents:

Requiem -- What a piece of wreck is man -- Earth eyes -- Memoria -- Atonement -- Fury & faith -- Resolution.

Subject Term:

Inauguration Day -- Poetry.

Audience/Lexile:

14-19

9-12

NP L

Publication Info:

New York : Viking, [2021]

Subject:

Inauguration Day -- Poetry.

Young adult poetry, American.

Poetry.

Biden, Joseph R., Jr. -- Inaugurations -- Poetry.

Biden, Joseph R.

Biden, Joe, 1942-

Biden, Joseph R., 1942-

SAILS ISBN:

9780593465066

Available:

Library	Shelf Number	Shelf Location	Status
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Searching... East Bridgewater Public Library	YA 811.6 GOR 2021	YOUNG ADULT NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
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Searching... Guilford H. Hathaway, Assonet	811.6 GOR	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
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Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

The instant #1 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestseller

The breakout poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman

Formerly titled The Hill We Climb and Other Poems , the luminous poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing. In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, this beautifully designed volume features poems in many inventive styles and structures and shines a light on a moment of reckoning. Call Us What We Carry reveals that Gorman has become our messenger from the past, our voice for the future.

Reviews (3)

Guardian Review

From the moment Amanda Gorman started to speak at President Biden's inauguration, on 20 January, the effect was spellbinding. A graceful young woman in a brilliant yellow suit, speaking to millions - she seemed like sunshine itself, bathing the audience in her light. That performance of her poem, The Hill We Climb, had star quality - and her words, pressing for national unity and reconciliation, soared. The sentiments might not have been out of the ordinary but their delivery was. "The new dawn blooms as we free it./For there is always light,/ If only we're brave enough to see it./If only we're brave enough to be it." Gorman is brave enough to be it. And to be able to perform at a political gathering and at once lift up and move an audience in this way is rare - the legacy of Martin Luther King needs no labouring. She is now celebrated as a US national youth poet laureate and could even be described as the country's dazzling new secular preacher. For, as her poem Cordage, or Atonement, puts it: "Poetry is its own prayer,/The closest words come to will." I found it difficult, reading Call Us What We Carry, to separate the poetry from the remembered image of that inauguration recital. Fending for themselves on the page, some of the poems appear incomplete - like unaccompanied minors, waiting for their guardian's return. They ask to be read aloud. The collection is ardent, committed but uneven. Gorman's hallmark is also, at times, her weakness: she cannot resist words that echo one another. "Shall this leave us bitter? Or better?" (The Shallows); or "As we become more akin/To kin," (Back to the Past) or "This book is awake. This book is a wake." (Ship's Manifest). When she pulls it off, it is musical: there is a sense of exalted wordplay - sounds as soulmates. But as often, the echo is empty and does not deliver enough meaning. Having said this, she nails a political point in describing the US's early Covid days, in At First, as "Unprecedented & unpresidented." Gorman makes a virtue of telling rather than showing. The poems are emotionally primed and have an aphoristic momentum. And while some images do not quite come off ("Hope is the soft bird/We send across the sea"), the emotion always does ("We have lost too much to lose") and one is grateful for her uncompromising take on the tragedy of the pandemic and the wrongness of living apart. Elsewhere, poems such as Fury & Faith are powerful reiterations of black lives mattering, peaceful rallying cries. She makes sure you know where she is coming from (sometimes in the most profound sense - as a descendant of slaves). History is her spur: she enterprisingly takes the testimony of Roy Underwood Plummer (1896-1966) and uses his soldier's journal to perform historical ventriloquy. In her vigilant, truthful poems about Covid, it is as if she were taking the temperature of the times (feverish, often courageous, sometimes sadly lacking a pulse) while also not neglecting to plunder the past to reflect upon other viruses that might inform our experience (she alludes to the famous Aids quilt and has extensively researched Spanish flu). And it is striking how often the image of a ship appears (we were, after all, in our separate ships metaphorically during lockdown). On the Good Ship Gorman there is never any doubting the shining intentions of the skipper. She is, throughout, playfully experimental. One poem is shaped as a supine whale, another an American flag and there is a poem in the shape of a face mask that ends with the line: "Who were we beneath our mask./Who are we now that it is trashed." In Fugue, she exults "Even now handshakes & hugs are like gifts". But she is right in The Unordinary World to express uncertainty: "The worst is over/Depending on who you ask". For the curious thing, beyond Gorman's control, is that many poems already seem past their sell-by - or (to play her game) their celebrate-by - date. The masks have not, after all, been trashed and there will be much more for this extraordinary woman to write.

Kirkus Review

Poems for teenagers and adults that cast a scrutinizing eye on United States history and current events while being hopeful about the future. Gorman's opening poem, "Ship's Manifest," lays out her intentions: "This book is a message in a bottle. / This book is a letter. / This book does not let up. / This book is awake. / This book is a wake. / For what is a record but a reckoning?" Gorman delivers subtle turns of phrase alongside playful yet purposeful punning. The book tackles grief without succumbing to melancholy. It earnestly charts the challenges its collective "we" must navigate, including mask mandates and Covid-19 restrictions; social isolation; the environmental negligence of past generations; and the civil unrest following the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. A "dark girl" dreams and skillfully steers the collective "we" point of view in these poems, which marks a sea change in the United States and, subsequently, in contemporary American poetry. Mostly, the collective "we" point of view adheres. Occasionally it reads as monotonous or prosaic. But variation exists in the diversity of concrete or visual poems--shaped on the page to look like flags, whales, buildings, and text bubbles--and the intricate range of people, generational insights, and historical footnotes populating the pages. The collection overflows with teachable moments you can imagine quoted at graduation ceremonies and special events for years to come. It's not a book to be read in one sitting but to be savored and revisited. By the time readers are finished, they'll have discovered Lucille Clifton, Don Mee Choi, M. NourbeSe Philip, and a dizzying host of poets and thinkers that inspired these verses. The poems don't preen to prove their intelligence; rather, they're illuminated by it. Gorman's impulse to enlighten readers rather than exclude them is the book's guiding force. With generosity and care, Gorman takes the role of the poet seriously: "The poet transcends 'telling' or 'performing' a story & / instead remembers it, touches, tastes, traps its vastness." An inspired anthem for the next generation--a remarkable poetry debut. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

Gorman's full-length poetry collection (originally titled, like her inauguration poem, The Hill We Climb), offers a stunning amalgamation of poems formatted in different styles to convey a message of sorrow, unity, and collective healing. Gorman aptly organizes her poems into seven sections, navigating such topics as the pandemic, racism, bigotry, and erasure. She uses a variety of styles, including concrete and visual poetry. Within these modes, Gorman eloquently uses the shapes of flags, whales, and buildings to outline the prevailing injustices happening in America and the fragility of the planet as a whole. She further goes on to commute poetry into the virtual age by producing poems that are formatted like text messages ("Sorry for the long text; / There are no small words in the mouth"). Another innovative use of poetic form is when Gorman intersects history with the present by superimposing her words on historical documents. Gorman lays out our pandemic world like a map, providing us hope and solidarity as lights to guide us. In a world filled with the crippling ebb and flow of the pandemic, Gorman offers hope and a push toward a collective society that values and fights for each other. Gorman's poetry operates as a perfect combination of elegy and call to action. This stunning collection belongs on every shelf.