A poem for the
New Year
Learn more about Amanda Gorman here
Poet & Icon
First poet to perform at a Super
Bowl
6th Inaugural poet, youngest
National Youth Poet Laureate
Honors graduate of Harvard
University
Author of several books of
poetry and a children’s book
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Today we will
be reading a
poem she
released on
New Year’s Day
2022, which
you can read
here.
As co-host of the 2021
Met Gala, Gorman
channeled the Statue of
Liberty with a Vera Wang
gown, silver leaf laurel,
and matching purse
inscribed with “give us
your tired,” modeled
after Lady Liberty’s
5
tablet
Underline what you
think is the most
important line
up to 3 lines,
must be in a row
7
Turn to a partner
and compare
8
Auld lang syne
Traditional Scottish
New Year song “times long past”
allusion
9
Line 9 reads: “That though we weren’t ready for this”
What do you think “this” refers to?
Jot down some ideas on your poem.
Turn to a partner
and compare
11
In an interview for Vanity Fair, Gorman said this poem is partly
inspired by the stories of grief and perseverance she’s seen shared
on social media, so it makes sense that she published it for the first
time on that platform.
A poet’s purpose
HEAL
In a red carpet interview, Gorman said
her “duty as a poet [is] to try to use
words to heal, to question, to
interrogate, and to hope.”
QUESTION
INTERROGATE
Label the poem for where you see it
performing each of these.
HOPE
For example, you could label line 3 “we
come to mend” with HEAL.
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Turn to a partner
and compare
14
One of Gorman’s signatures as a poet is her creative use of word play to
make a poignant point. She accomplishes this through an array of
literary techniques, including (but not limited to):
▫
▫
▫
▫
Juxtaposition
Rhyme or slant rhyme
Alliteration
Repetition
Highlight the poem when you see her using one of these, and others
that you spot on your own!
15
Poetic genius at work
Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree,
Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee,
Where we weren’t aware, we’re now awake;
Those moments we missed
Are now these moments we make…
Lines 23-26
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Let’s get creative
This idea belongs to another one of my
favorite poets, Kaveh Akbar, which he
explains on Pioneer Works.
Basically, he reads his poems so many times
that he starts to see them as idea images, or
as he describes it, “a symbol that enters my
eye all at once like an ideogram or
hieroglyph.”
On the next slides, you can see some of his
paintings of his visual interpretations of his
poems.
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BIG CONCEPT
Bring the attention of your
audience over a key concept using
icons or illustrations
Along with your design, write a paragraph that explains
your artistic choices and how they relate to the poem,
specifically regarding:
Colors
Shapes
Order / placement / arrangement on the page
Arrows (if used)
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A poem for the
New Year