A new poetry volume, a Harvard graduate doing great things, and a novel set in rural Vermont
By Nina MacLaughlin Globe Correspondent,Updated January 20, 2021, 6:39 p.m.
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The body tells the story
In her perceptive and powerful new collection of poetry, âWomen in the Waiting Room,â Kirun Kapur aims her attention on the female body, its transgressions, how it is transgressed, and how it transcends those transgressions. Kapur, poetry editor of âThe Drum,â who has taught at Brandeis and BU, and now teaches at Amherst College, does not shy away from violence. She writes of a face battered with a broomstick, and other brutalities: âFor years this face / I trained my mind to un-seeâ / cheek eaten away by fish, / girl-body, washed up / in the canal, wrappedâ / the brand identified as Glad.â Thereâs menace and violation here, and lines of unflinching wisdom: âFor a girl to be innocent she has to be dead.â A repeated se
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Who is Amanda Gorman and what inspired her inauguration poem, The Hill We Climb
About two weeks ago, poet Amanda Gorman was struggling to finish The Hill We Climb. She was feeling exhausted, and she worried she wasnât up to the monumental task she faced: composing a poem about national unity to recite at the inauguration of Joe Biden as president.
âI had this huge thing, probably one of the most important things Iâll ever do in my career,â she said in an interview. âIt was like, if I try to climb this mountain all at once, Iâm just going to pass out.â
President Biden’s inaugural address focused on bringing the nation together. But that won’t happen if “unity” means we revert to the way things used to be.
Learn more about young poet Amanda Gorman, the country's first National Youth Poet Laureate whose powerful poem "The Hill We Climb" was one of the inauguration's most talked about moments.