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.
AMANDA GORMANLet each dawn find us courageous, brought closer, heeding the lights before the fight is over.
More Amanda Gorman Quotes
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When you’re someone who’s lived a life where certain resources were scarce, you always feel like abundance is forbidden fruit.
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When they tell you to go back to where you come from, tell them proudly that this is where you come from.
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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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Poetry is the lens we use to interrogate the history we stand on and the future we stand for.
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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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Your daily challenge to not be like a boss, but the boss, in all things you.
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No matter how you say it, the hill we climb is a hill we climb together.
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I am the daughter of Black writers who are descended from Freedom Fighters who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me.
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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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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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Whenever I listen to songs, I rewrite them in my head.
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My mom wanted to make sure I was prepared to grow up with Black skin in America.
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One of my delays was in speech and speech pronunciation, and also the auditory processing issue just means I really struggle as an auditory learner.
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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.
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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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One of the most rewarding moments of my career is when I’m speaking to a child who tells me they have the same speech impediment that I had to overcome and that they’re going to keep writing or sharing their voice after hearing my story.
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Truth is to act out of the best of ourselves.
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You don’t have to be a poet, you don’t have to be a politician or be in the White House to make an impact with your words. We all have this capacity to find solutions for the future.
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We know. We believe. And we act, because it is our civic duty.
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As a public poet, people often don’t see the reality of my life.
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Through poetry we shall catch the conscience of a nation.
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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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I am my own best mirror.
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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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See the line where the sky meets the sea.
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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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