Amanda Gorman composes a poetic inauguration Poetry is "having a moment" as America is riveted by a poem (and poet) that captures a country's and inauguration's inflection point. January 22, 2021 — 5:36pm Text size Copy shortlink: "You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose" is a memorable Mario Cuomo quote that took an added dimension after Amanda Gorman's gorgeous poem, "The Hill We Climb," captured this week's inaugural inflection point between two presidencies. The poem, concurrently introspective and inspiring, spoke to a dispirited nation that has careened from crises ranging from a raging pandemic, to rage in cities, to an attack on the democratic process that culminated in the inauguration itself. Read radiantly by the poised, 22-year-old national youth poet laureate, Americans paid unusual attention to poetry — and more profoundly, the real state of the nation — right from these opening stanzas: