--- title: Amanda Gorman on Poetry, Beauty and Sudden Fame | TIME description: Amanda Gorman’s eloquent poetry at Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration soothed millions of Americans still reeling just two weeks after pro-Trump supporters staged an insurrection at the Capitol. canonical: https://time.com/video/DmoPJWpm/ og:title: Amanda Gorman on Poetry, Beauty and Sudden Fame og:description: Amanda Gorman’s eloquent poetry at Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration soothed millions of Americans still reeling just two weeks after pro-Trump supporters staged an insurrection at the Capitol. og:url: https://time.com/video/DmoPJWpm/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/DmoPJWpm/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Amanda Gorman on Poetry, Beauty and Sudden Fame twitter:description: Amanda Gorman’s eloquent poetry at Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration soothed millions of Americans still reeling just two weeks after pro-Trump supporters staged an insurrection at the Capitol. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/DmoPJWpm/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Amanda Gorman on Poetry, Beauty and Sudden Fame > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Amanda Gorman on Poetry, Beauty and Sudden Fame [Watch (HLS stream): Amanda Gorman on Poetry, Beauty and Sudden Fame](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/DmoPJWpm.m3u8) (3:45)  _Published 2021-02-05. Amanda Gorman’s eloquent poetry at Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration soothed millions of Americans still reeling just two weeks after pro-Trump supporters staged an insurrection at the Capitol._ --- Jul 28, 2023 4:54 AM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Amanda Gorman: 'The Hill We Climb'](/video/u7xVZPFx/) ### Amanda Gorman: 'The Hill We Climb' [Poet Amanda Gorman Delivers Inaugural Poem](/video/6ozgIHEL/) ### Poet Amanda Gorman Delivers Inaugural Poem [The Nantucket Project: Poetry is the Voice at the Back of the Mind](/video/pl9seuJb/) ### The Nantucket Project: Poetry is the Voice at the Back of the Mind --- ## Transcript I am still grappling with the fact that I have entered the historical record. The past couple of weeks have been insane. That's literally the word that just keeps popping up in my head. I don't think I always knew I was going to be the novel poet, but every single time I wrote a public poll before I began writing it, I would tell myself, Write a poem that is worthy of a presidential inauguration. I wanted to hold myself to a high standard that everything that I wrote had to be worthy of hope. It had to be worthy of a future. Because it's really easy to write a poem that makes people feel really bad about themselves and their country and their people and the culture and the race. The real kind of demand and hill the climb, I think, as poets, is to observe that darkness, to listen to it, but also to lead people out of the shade. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another. We seek harm to none and harmony for all. I think it's really easy to see someone, especially when they're young, have a kind of electric moment like this and say, Oh, that was instantaneous. Oh, that was so easy. But there was so much labor that was put into that moment, not just for me, but the people who raised me, my ancestors, my family, my community. They have really shepherded me to this moment and encouraged me to live every moment as if I'm making history because they believed that I would. My dream to become president really started, I want to say, in like sixth grade, we had to be really conscious about the image that you're putting out into the world. Not necessarily that you have to be inauthentic, but you are part of a generation. Every single thing you do is going to be documented. So I remember countless times hanging with friends and them taking a selfie and me just not being in it or me removing myself from the situation because I was like, Guys, I'm running for president in 30 years. Got to be careful about what images of me are out there as a black woman. Fashion is always pivotal for me in my self-expression. There's something that we call kind of the politics of respectability in the African-American community, which is to say we are always held to such high standards that even basic things such as our hair or makeup or clothes have a political importance, even thinking back to the civil rights movement, what it meant to march in your Sunday best. So I kind of like to walk forward in that tradition and also redefine it. I like to imagine a type of grace and elegance and regality that actually speaks to the African diaspora. So I made the very intentional choice, for example, to wear my hair natural at the inauguration, to wear my hair and my braids today to say there is a way to be beautiful and regal and gracious in black at the same time. But not mutually exclusive. If anything, the mutually inclusive, we're in such an exciting time, I think, when it comes to black art. When I first began writing, all the stories I wrote were about girls with green eyes and red hair. And it wasn't that, you know, I was against stories that featured skin color was like mine. I just didn't know those existed. I didn't know that was something that I could actually write. And it wasn't until I went to say, enter middle school and I was able to stumble across the Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. When you know a girl that looks like me on the cover. It just metamorphosis. My thinking, my blackness was in something to hide. 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