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.

Really enjoyed it, it definitely felt reflective of the start of covid and the first lockdown, it was also very interesting as the style of the poems changed making each to feel refreshing 

Style/writing: 5 stars
Themes: 4.5 stars
Perspective: 4 stars

Oh yeah, this book is goonna go down in history for, at the very least, almost perfectly capturing the feelings we had during the moments we lived through between November 2019 and August 2021. I'm always a sucker for time travel in movies and tv, but mixing the distant past with the present? More than that, using the direct words of the past as if they were said in the present?! Future historians, it's all here. It's all there. It's all real. It made me uncomfortable a couple times but that's because the wound is still fresh. As said in some of the poems, it's still ongoing. I'm sure I'll read this again in 10 20 30 60 years with a familiar hindsight and vague rememberance, and probably feel as sick to my stomach as I feel now. But, not a bad sick. A sad sick. Mourning sickness. We'll never not mourn, even if we forget. But with this book at least a part of us will always remember.