natashaleighton_'s review against another edition
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
I don’t usually read or enjoy poetry all that much, but Amanda Gorman’s collection was eloquent and emotional in a way that I wasn’t expecting.
Her words perfectly capture the spirit and emotions that pretty much everyone has felt at some point in the past few years and I can’t imagine anyone not finding at least one poem that will deeply resonate. Even if you don’t like (or enjoy) poetry, I still urge you to pick this up—you may be surprised how much you enjoy it.
And if your curious, some of my faves were:
At First
The Shallows
Lucent
Fury & Faith
The Truth In One Nation
What We Carry
(And of course) The Hill We Climb
Her words perfectly capture the spirit and emotions that pretty much everyone has felt at some point in the past few years and I can’t imagine anyone not finding at least one poem that will deeply resonate. Even if you don’t like (or enjoy) poetry, I still urge you to pick this up—you may be surprised how much you enjoy it.
And if your curious, some of my faves were:
At First
The Shallows
Lucent
Fury & Faith
The Truth In One Nation
What We Carry
(And of course) The Hill We Climb
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Racism, and Police brutality
Moderate: Death, Violence, and Slavery
Minor: Colonisation and Mass/school shootings
lahars_little_library's review against another edition
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
After listening to Amanda Gordon's collection of poems on audio, I am wishing I had a paper copy to mark all my favorite poems and quotes. As with all collections or anthologies you may not connect with every single poem. But I found that those I did (which was the vast majority) were so throught-provoking and had such exquisite use of language that I cannot help but give 5 stars. The Poem Survey followed by Gated should be required reading. It was so striking.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism, Slavery, Violence, Death, Grief, and Police brutality
Minor: Mass/school shootings
sophtanda's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
fast-paced
5.0
Really enjoyed it, it definitely felt reflective of the start of covid and the first lockdown, it was also very interesting as the style of the poems changed making each to feel refreshing
Content Warnings
Moderate: Medical content, Medical trauma, Racism, War, Grief, Death, Gun violence, Hate crime, and Police brutality
divyareads's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, and Racism
readandfindout's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Style/writing: 5 stars
Themes: 4.5 stars
Perspective: 4 stars
Themes: 4.5 stars
Perspective: 4 stars
Content Warnings
Graphic: Police brutality
Moderate: Racism, Grief, Death, Slavery, Violence, and Medical trauma
greenlivingaudioworm's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
sad
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Grief, Slavery, Violence, Colonisation, Death, Police brutality, and Racism
michaelion's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
Oh yeah, this book is goonna go down in history for, at the very least, almost perfectly capturing the feelings we had during the moments we lived through between November 2019 and August 2021. I'm always a sucker for time travel in movies and tv, but mixing the distant past with the present? More than that, using the direct words of the past as if they were said in the present?! Future historians, it's all here. It's all there. It's all real. It made me uncomfortable a couple times but that's because the wound is still fresh. As said in some of the poems, it's still ongoing. I'm sure I'll read this again in 10 20 30 60 years with a familiar hindsight and vague rememberance, and probably feel as sick to my stomach as I feel now. But, not a bad sick. A sad sick. Mourning sickness. We'll never not mourn, even if we forget. But with this book at least a part of us will always remember.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Police brutality, Death, Medical content, Racism, Confinement, Grief, Hate crime, Medical trauma, and Xenophobia
thereadingnurse2021's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
fast-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Racism, Slavery, Death, Gun violence, Hate crime, and Police brutality
Moderate: Chronic illness, Classism, Mass/school shootings, Colonisation, and Medical trauma
There are many content warnings for this set of poems, but that is because it is a cry for change. How can we ever make the world a better place if we do not first confront the wrongs that have been put into it? Yes, this text hurts. Yes, it will make you angry. But that’s because it’s supposed to. It is meant to inspire action.maple_dove's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
slow-paced
4.0
The "Spanish" influenza did not originate in Spain. In fact, the first recorded case was in the United States--in Kansas on March 9, 1918 (bewareth March). But because Spain was neutral in World War I, it did not censor reports of the disease to the public. (pg. 81)
To tell the truth, then, is to risk being remembered by its fiction. Countless countries laid blame to one another. What the US called the Spanish influenza, Spain called the French flu, or Naples Soldier. What Germans dubbed the Russian Pest, the Russians called the Chinese flu. (pg. 81-82)
It's said that ignorance is bliss.
Ignorance is this: a vine hat sneaks up a tree, killing not by poison, but by blocking out its light. (pg. 82)
The Tribune reporter Henry M. Hyde wrote that Black people "are compelled to live crowded in dark and unsanitary room; they are surrounded by constant temptations in the way of widespread saloons and other worse resorts." (pg. 83-84)
The oppressor will always say the oppressed want their overcrowded cage, cozy & comforting as it is; the master will claim that the slaves' chains were understood, good, all right, okay--that is to say, not chains at all. (pg. 84)
We politely asked the white lady behind us
If she could please take the next lift
To continue social distancing.
Her face flared up like a cross in the night.
Are you kidding me? she yelled,
Like we'd just declared
Elevators for us only
Or Yous must enter from the back
Or We have the right to refuse
Humanity to anyone.
Suddenly it struck us:
Why it's so pertubing for privileged groups to follow restrictions of place & personhood.
Doing so means for once wearing the chains their power has shackled on the rest of us.
It is to surrender the one difference that kept them separate & thus superior. (Pg. 143-144)
Some were asked to walk a fraction / of our exclusion for a year & it almost destroyed all they thought they were. Yet here we are. Still walking, still kept.
To be kept to the edges of existence is the Inheritance of the marginalized. (Pg. 145)
For what does the Karen carry but her dwindling power, dying and desperate? Dangerous & dangling like a gun hung from a tongue? (Pg. 145)
There is more than one hue of haunting.
We want to believe that
What we care for can keep.
We want to believe.
The truth is, we are one nation, under ghosts.
The truth is, we are one nation, under fraud.
Tell us, honestly:
Will we ever be who we say. (pg. 166-167)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism
Minor: Colonisation and Death
I forgot about listing content warningslexa's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
sad
slow-paced
3.75
Beautifully narrated by the author. The parts in the middle (historical) dragged a bit and we’re hard to piece together, but I enjoyed many of the other poems. I went into this book without knowing much about it and wasn’t quite prepared for all the pandemic content. But it was overall good.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Grief, Police brutality, and Racism
COVID-19 pandemic