Skip to main content

January Read---Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman


Call Us What We Carry
poetry by Amanda Gorman

Monday, January 31

Moderator:  Marcy Gamzon



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.
 

Comments

  1. At first blush, Amanda Gorman's work as a hole didn't seem exceptional in any grand way. However, as I reflected, as I recalled, as I kept hearing lines and remembering phrases, I began to think there was more to this author than my initial judgements.

    I think there are poems that my students would enjoy, especially those formatted like text messages. I like her concrete poetry and the way she explores that form. The poems "School's Out" and "There's No Power Like Home" definitely speak to the experience many students had during the pandemic. Gorman's use of repetition, imagery, simile/metaphor and personification would be literary devices I could use in class.

    The poems "Earth Eyes" and "Captive" would speak to many of my green-thinking scholars and the former is one of the concrete poems I like in the collection.

    Because of the abstract interpretations required for much of the collection, i would most likely only use single poems from this collection and not the entire collection in class.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

September 2024 Felix Ever After by Kacen Callendar

  According to Goodreads . . . Felix Love has never been in love—and, yes, he’s painfully aware of the irony. He desperately wants to know what it’s like and why it seems so easy for everyone but him to find someone. What’s worse is that, even though he is proud of his identity, Felix also secretly fears that he’s one marginalization too many—Black, queer, and transgender—to ever get his own happily-ever-after. When an anonymous student begins sending him transphobic messages—after publicly posting Felix’s deadname alongside images of him before he transitioned—Felix comes up with a plan for revenge. What he didn’t count on: his catfish scenario landing him in a quasi–love triangle.... But as he navigates his complicated feelings, Felix begins a journey of questioning and self-discovery that helps redefine his most important relationship: how he feels about himself. Felix Ever After  is an honest and layered story about identity, falling in love, and recognizing the love you d...

December and January Meeting Monday, January 29

DECEMBER    The Sherlockian by Graham Moore   Moderator, Brad Craddock JANUARY         My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallant   Moderator, Shelley Davis Hurtling from present day New York to Victorian London,  The Sherlockian  weaves the history of Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle into an inspired and entertaining double mystery that proves to be anything but "elementary." In December 1893, Sherlock Holmes-adoring Londoners eagerly opened their Strand magazines, anticipating the detective's next adventure, only to find the unthinkable: his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, had killed their hero off. London spiraled into mourning-crowds sported black armbands in grief-and railed against Conan Doyle as his assassin. Then in 1901, just as abruptly as Conan Doyle had "murdered" Holmes in "The Final Problem," he resurrected him. Though the writer kept detailed diaries of his days and work, Conan Doyle never explained thi...

March Book---There There by Tommy Orange

  March 28, 2022 4:00 Tommy Orange’s “groundbreaking, extraordinary” ( The New York Times )  There There  is the “brilliant, propulsive” ( People Magazine ) story of twelve unforgettable characters, Urban Indians living in Oakland, California, who converge and collide on one fateful day. It’s “the year’s most galvanizing debut novel” ( Entertainment Weekly ).   As we learn the reasons that each person is attending the Big Oakland Powwow—some generous, some fearful, some joyful, some violent—momentum builds toward a shocking yet inevitable conclusion that changes everything. Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame. Dene Oxendene is pulling his life back together after his uncle’s death and has come to work at the powwow to honor his uncle’s memory. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil, who has taught himself traditional Indian dance through YouTube videos and will to perform in ...