Amanda Gorman’s poems shine with a rare blend of youthful urgency, lyrical grace, and powerful social vision. Her work often explores themes of justice, hope, identity, and collective healing, using language that feels both musical and fiercely contemporary. Gorman writes with an awareness of history and a commitment to imagining a better future, weaving together personal experience and national consciousness. Her poems frequently address racial inequality, political division, and the responsibilities of citizenship, yet they do so with a tone rooted in optimism rather than despair.
One of Gorman’s strengths is her ability to combine spoken-word energy with literary craftsmanship. Her rhythm, repetition, and imagery create a sense of rising momentum, as though each poem is a call to action. In works like “The Hill We Climb,” she turns poetry into a communal space, inviting readers to see themselves as participants in change. Her voice is confident, courageous, and deeply compassionate, reminding audiences that words can be a force of unity.
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| Amanda Gorman |
Overall, Amanda Gorman’s poetry stands out for its clarity, uplift, and moral conviction. She writes not only to express, but to inspire—encouraging readers to recognize their own power in shaping a more just and hopeful world.
We Rise
Today, everyone’s eyes
Are on us as we rise.
Today is the day women
Are paving the way,
Speaking our truth to power.
In this hour, it is our duty
to find the brave beauty
In rooting for other women
So they too know we are not victims,
We are victors, the greatest predictors
of progress. We press for change,
A new dawn drawn into the open
By women whose silence is broken.
We push on and act on
Our responsibility to bring visibility
To the most vulnerable:
To bring freedom to those who didn’t have a choice,
To bring volume to those who are using their voice.
We clear a woman’s way,
We don’t fear the day
She steps into the light
Because we are with her
Every step of the fight.
There’s a lot at stake, but making
A difference always takes great courage.
So we encourage women who dare to stare
Fear square in its face,
Women who’ve always shown
That when one woman stands up
She is never alone.
We know that when she steps up to right a wrong,
She will fight to bring others along
To the network, into the conversation,
Working together to change communities
And nations for generations, our world
Made all the stronger the longer
Women are able to sit at the table.
It is her strength, her story, and her spirit
Which inspires other vital voices
to speak up when they hear it.
So let it be said that light will be shed
When our world is led by leaders ahead
of the headlines, the voices
Who are first on the frontline,
These women who stand up,
knowing the wind
Not by where it is, but where it is blowing,
Leading worlds not by how society is
But where change is going.
We all leap forward when one woman tries,
When she defies with her rallying cries.
Here lies, but does not rest, the best
Of tested women who call us all to rise,
Speaking the truth in this finest hour:
That to their own power,
every single woman is entitled.
But it’s how they empower others
That makes women’s voices so vital.
In This Place
(An American Lyric)
There’s a poem in this place—
in the footfalls in the halls
in the quiet beat of the seats.
It is here, at the curtain of day,
where America writes a lyric
you must whisper to say.
There’s a poem in this place—
in the heavy grace,
the lined face of this noble building,
collections burned and reborn twice.
There’s a poem in Boston’s Copley Square
where protest chants
tear through the air
like sheets of rain,
where love of the many
swallows hatred of the few.
There’s a poem in Charlottesville
where tiki torches string a ring of flame
tight round the wrist of night
where men so white they gleam blue—
seem like statues
where men heap that long wax burning
ever higher
where Heather Heyer
blooms forever in a meadow of resistance.
There’s a poem in the great sleeping giant
of Lake Michigan, defiantly raising
its big blue head to Milwaukee and Chicago—
a poem begun long ago, blazed into frozen soil,
strutting upward and aglow.
There’s a poem in Florida, in East Texas
where streets swell into a nexus
of rivers, cows afloat like mottled buoys in the brown,
where courage is now so common
that 23-year-old Jesus Contreras rescues people from floodwaters.
There’s a poem in Los Angeles
yawning wide as the Pacific tide
where a single mother swelters
in a windowless classroom, teaching
black and brown students in Watts
to spell out their thoughts
so her daughter might write
this poem for you.
There's a lyric in California
where thousands of students march for blocks,
undocumented and unafraid;
where my friend Rosa finds the power to blossom
in deadlock, her spirit the bedrock of her community.
She knows hope is like a stubborn
ship gripping a dock,
a truth: that you can’t stop a dreamer
or knock down a dream.
How could this not be her city
su nación
our country
our America,
our American lyric to write—
a poem by the people, the poor,
the Protestant, the Muslim, the Jew,
the native, the immigrant,
the black, the brown, the blind, the brave,
the undocumented and undeterred,
the woman, the man, the nonbinary,
the white, the trans,
the ally to all of the above
and more?
Tyrants fear the poet.
Now that we know it
we can’t blow it.
We owe it
to show it
not slow it
although it
hurts to sew it
when the world
skirts below it.
Hope—
we must bestow it
like a wick in the poet
so it can grow, lit,
bringing with it
stories to rewrite—
the story of a Texas city depleted but not defeated
a history written that need not be repeated
a nation composed but not yet completed.
There’s a poem in this place—
a poem in America
a poet in every American
who rewrites this nation, who tells
a story worthy of being told on this minnow of an earth
to breathe hope into a palimpsest of time—
a poet in every American
who sees that our poem penned
doesn’t mean our poem’s end.
There’s a place where this poem dwells—
it is here, it is now, in the yellow song of dawn’s bell
where we write an American lyric
we are just beginning to tell.
The Miracle of Morning
I thought I’d awaken to a world in mourning.
Heavy clouds crowding, a society storming.
But there’s something different on this golden morning.
Something magical in the sunlight, wide and warming.
I see a dad with a stroller taking a jog.
Across the street, a bright-eyed girl chases her dog.
A grandma on a porch fingers her rosaries.
She grins as her young neighbor brings her groceries.
While we might feel small, separate, and all alone,
Our people have never been more closely tethered.
The question isn’t if we will weather this unknown,
But how we will weather this unknown together.
So on this meaningful morn, we mourn and we mend.
Like light, we can’t be broken, even when we bend.
As one, we will defeat both despair and disease.
We stand with healthcare heroes and all employees;
With families, libraries, schools, waiters, artists;
Businesses, restaurants, and hospitals hit hardest.
We ignite not in the light, but in lack thereof,
For it is in loss that we truly learn to love.
In this chaos, we will discover clarity.
In suffering, we must find solidarity.
For it’s our grief that gives us our gratitude,
Shows us how to find hope, if we ever lose it.
So ensure that this ache wasn’t endured in vain:
Do not ignore the pain. Give it purpose. Use it.
Read children’s books, dance alone to DJ music.
Know that this distance will make our hearts grow fonder.
From a wave of woes our world will emerge stronger.
We’ll observe how the burdens braved by humankind
Are also the moments that make us humans kind;
Let every dawn find us courageous, brought closer;
Heeding the light before the fight is over.
When this ends, we’ll smile sweetly, finally seeing
In testing times, we became the best of beings.
THERE'S NO POWER LIKE HOME
We were sick of home,
Home sick.
That mask around our ear
Hung itself into the year.
Once we stepped into our home,
We found ourselves gasping, tear-
ing it off like a bandage,
Like something that gauzed
The great gape of our mouth.
Even faceless, a smile can still
Scale up our cheeks,
Bone by bone,
Our eyes crinkling
Delicately as rice paper
At some equally fragile beauty-
The warbling blues of a dog,
A squirrel venturing close,
The lilt of a beloved's joke.
Our mask is no veil, but a view.
What are we, if not what we see in another.
SCHOOL'S OUT
The announcement
Swung blunt as an axe-blow:
All students were to leave
Campus as soon as possible.
We think we cried,
Our brains bleached blank.
We were already trying to forget
What we would live.
What we would give.
* * *
Beware the ides of March.
We recognized that something ran
Rampant as a rumor
Among our ranks.
Cases bleeding closer,
Like spillage in a napkin.
There is nothing more worrisome
Than a titan who believes itself
Separate from the world.
* * *
Graduation day.
We don't need a gown.
We don't need a stage.
We are walking beside our ancestors,
Their drums roar for us,
Their feet stomp at our life.
There is power in being robbed
& still choosing to dance.
