Poetry is interesting because not everyone is going to become a great poet, but anyone can be, and anyone can enjoy poetry, and it’s this openness, this accessibility of poetry that makes it the language of people.
AMANDA GORMANWhat a day. What a life. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you
More Amanda Gorman Quotes
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Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.
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To hone my voice, I read everything, from books to cereal boxes, three times: once for fun, the second time to learn something new about the writing craft, and the third time was to improve that piece.
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That’s kind of the challenging thing about writing an inaugural poem. You’re speaking to everyone, but you don’t also want to speak for everyone.
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Poetry and language are often at the heartbeat of movements for change.
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Poetry is – it’s an art form, but, to me, it’s also a weapon, it’s also an instrument. It’s the ability to make ideas that have been known, felt and said. And that’s a real, I think, type of duty for the poet.
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Writing wasn’t just a form of expression. It was a form of pathology by embarking on spoken word over and over and over again and reciting my poems.
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Truth is to act out of the best of ourselves.
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I love Black poets. I love that as a Black girl, I get to participate in that legacy. So that’s Yusef Komunyakaa, Sonia Sanchez, Tracy K. Smith, Phillis Wheatley.
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When you are learning through poetry how to speak English, it lends to a great understanding of sound, of pitch, of pronunciation, so I think of my speech impediment not as a weakness or a disability, but as one of my greatest strengths.
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My Instagram doesn’t cover my insecurities, my lack of self-confidence, that week I spent crying, there’s a question of whether I should be sharing that online.
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We know. We believe. And we act, because it is our civic duty.
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It wasn’t until I was named Youth Poet Laureate of L.A. in high school though that I officially began calling myself a poet. I just always loved writing, period.
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I have to interweave my poetry with purpose. For me, that purpose is to help people, and to shed a light on issues that have far too long been in the darkness.
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Whenever I listen to songs, I rewrite them in my head.
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I think it made me all that much stronger of a writer when you have to teach yourself how to say words from scratch.
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But as for the future, I foresee a world which is more creative, more open, more loving, more ecologically friendly, more honest about its history and progress, and I think a lot of those contributions will be made by young people.
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I grew up at this incredibly odd intersection in Los Angeles, where it felt like the black ‘hood met black elegance met white gentrification met Latin culture met wetlands.
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The fight isn’t over – it’s just begun. It’s time to suit up for a battle that might determine the war.
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I try to approach reading in front of millions of people as I would reading in somebody’s living room.
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Your daily challenge to not be like a boss, but the boss, in all things you.
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I did a lot of sitting back and thinking about what I wanted for myself and what I wanted for my country: more unity, more support for the arts and more opportunities for young writers from marginalized groups.
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We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace and the norms and notions of what just is, isn’t always justice.
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As a public poet, people often don’t see the reality of my life.
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I was writing since I can remember – I just didn’t know it was poetry yet, or that writing could be a career.
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What a day. What a life. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you
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When you have to teach yourself how to say sounds, when you have to be highly concerned about pronunciation, it gives you a certain awareness of sonics, of the auditory experience.
AMANDA GORMAN