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BY MICHAEL PHILLIPS TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE
January 21, 2021
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Amanda Gorman delivers a poem after Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. (The New York Times)
Our new president is a man for prose. In his inaugural address Wednesday, on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, Joe Biden defended the value of truth, facts, science. He spoke forcefully of the seemingly unachievable need for a sense of shared purpose, in the face of a pandemic and so many other grim challenges.
Then, the nation and the world heard something else. We heard something else. We heard something foreign and elusive for too long in American public life: a touch of the poet.
The 22-year-old Youth Poet Laureate just took her place in history
By Jessica MasonJan 20th, 2021, 4:30 pm
There were many incredible and moving moments during the inauguration of Joe Biden that left me weeping. I cried seeing Eugene Goodman escort Kamala Harris to the dais. I cried when firefighter Andrea Hall recited the pledge of allegiance using ASL. I cried at an openly bisexual woman and a Latina woman singing on the steps of the capitol. I cried seeing the first woman sworn in as VP and a man who cares about people sworn in as President.
But the moment that moved me most and captivated the nation was when 22-year-old Amanda Gorman took the podium as the first-ever Youth Poet Laureate and the youngest poet to speak at the inauguration in history. Gorman recited a poem that truly captured the power of this moment and the promise of America.
WHYY
By
While plans were already in place for a bare bones ceremony due to the coronavirus pandemic, the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6 restricted activity around D.C. even further. But because the Presidential Inauguration Committee was already producing the inauguration as a made-for-TV event, their plans remain fairly intact.
Usually, the inauguration hands out more than 200,000 official tickets for the closest viewing of the event, with overflow crowds spread along the National Mall. This year, tickets were limited to just 1,000 people, and the National Mall is closed to spectators.
When Biden announced his candidacy in Philadelphia in 2019, he said he would work to unify the nation. Now, as that goal seems even more challenging, expect that theme to carry on through his inaugural address.