On the front flap of the dust jacket, the book reads:

This book is a message in a bottle.
This book is a letter.
This book does not let up.

This book does NOT let up, indeed. "What place have we in our histories except the present?" (123) Gorman asks in "War: What, Is it Good?" The book is a memoir, largely of the pandemic. But to read it is remember that it was more than Covid-19. It was a reckoning. It was a nightmare and a dream. It tested all of us, not all in the same ways.

Gorman's gifts with language are woven through poems that rhyme and poems that don't, pieces of prose by Corporal Roy Plummer (1896-1966) interspersed with Gorman's verse, a list of scenes to make up a filmic "Monomyth" that narrates the crumbling of normalcy beginning in December 2019 in Wuhan, through apocalyptic brushfires in Australia, through the murder of George Floyd, ultimately to emerge/submerge into the Unordinary World:

"We are not all heroes, but we are all at least human. This is not a
closing, but an opening, a widening--not a yawn but a scream, a
poem sung. What will we admit of & into ourselves. There is no such thing as "all over" and "all done". (191)

The short poem "Anonymous" on 180 features white letters on a black mask, an emblem so charged with meaning in this Unordinary World.

The title of the collection, Call Us What We Carry, truly captures a sense of the book as a whole, and is not just a reference to the penultimate poem "What We Carry" nor the poem "Call Us" (34) wherein we find that exact line. Naming and carrying both feature in much of the work, as does navigation and light.

There are seven sections of the book: Requiem, What a Piece of Wreck is Man, Earth Eyes, Memoria, Atonement, Fury & Faith, and Resolution. These titles become more like beacons as you read through the collection and pick up the various threads. For example, in the poem "Lucent", which is the first piece of "Earth Eyes", the meditation on lumen, lucent..."Our requiem as raptus" (60) reminds us of the role of light in a requiem Mass (luceat eis, lux aeterna) but also how "perhaps it is we who make/Falsities of luminscence--" (61).

In the middle of the book, in a piece called "Pre-Memory", Gorman reminds us:
"Storytelling is the way that unarticulated memory becomes art, becomes artifact, becomes fact, becomes felt again, becomes free."

Yes, the book does not let up, nor should it. We need to feel again. We need to be free.

Admittedly, I'm not really one for poetry, but this book didn't really land for me. It often felt like the author was trying to say something really profound, and I wasn't quite getting it. But by far my biggest complaint is the form factor. There were some really poor decisions made that made some of the poems really difficult to read, and others just didn't really feel like they worked well in a book of poetry; they were more suited to something like an art installation. 

I am not a poetry fan but this one felt powerful and relevant that I was moved. I don't think it would start convincing me to read more poetry but for those who are indeed poetry fans or wanting to try their hand at it, try this one. It's best to go through it slowly even if you can read it one sitting if you wanted.

Really beautiful! Probably would have enjoyed even more if I read it in 2020/2021

A beautiful and timeless collection of poetry. All the references were well-researched, and the parallels to the past that Gorman speaks to are haunting. There were more than a few lines that resonated with me.

My rating is solely based on my enjoyment, not on the skill displayed. Now that I'm far removed from school, I think I've lost the ability to deeply analyze poetry. Anyway, my favorite portion was the erasure poems. They call to mind collage art or remixes, two art forms that are very dear to me. 

Powerful, moving, informative

This isn't just poetry, but a history lesson couched in moving words that will twist you in so many different ways it'll leave you feeling raw with emotions: hope, anger, joy, sorrow. The way Amanda Gorman intertwines the experience of the Covid Pandemic with what has come before is powerful. I learned things I never knew: like how elements of history don't exist in a bubble, but instead are bonded with others. The most shocking was that of refugees desperate to escape the Jim Crow south, WW1, and the Spanish Flu. We are always blaming the innocent for what they did not do, and it is always fueled by hate. Do we never learn?

I can see ways the world has learned, though often it feels like for every step forward these days, we take two steps back. It feels like we're just repeating the past especially right now with all this injustice allowed to be committed by cops/white supremacist groups/nazis/other hate groups, puritanical charades about protecting the children that are misinformation, book banning, and hate -  against Drag Queens, against Trans people, against Immigrants/Migrants/Refugees. I think if ever there was an important time for this book to be read and taught? It's now.

There's definitely a lot to unpack in her words, especially about how even in despair, there's still joy to be found. I suppose there's a great deal to be said about the empowerment to be found as well. About not losing hope, about not giving up, about not being silent. So, even with everything above, losing hope and giving up would be terrible. I do hope that one day people will learn and more of us stand together than apart to continue enacting positive change for the future of the world and the generations to come. I didn't see it during the Covid Pandemic - people content to be selfish instead of staying at home, wearing masks, social distancing, and getting vaccinated even if it meant the deaths of those most vulnerable or their own loved ones - but perhaps this pandemic we're still living through while people bury their heads in the sand will be the one that teaches future generations, and governments, not to make the same mistakes.

One can hope.