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Hers was an invitation to move forward together. As Gorman acknowledged this country’s contested history, and its contemporary tumult, her invocation of the plural pronoun “we” reminded us that, for good or literal ill, our lives are connected. Her verse, as vibrant and elegant as her yellow coat against the cold, illuminated the imagination as well as the occasion, confirming her as a worthy successor to several other Black women inaugural poets writing to and for an American ideal-a lineage traceable all the way back to Phillis Wheatley, who, at the dawn of the Republic, addressed a poem to then General George Washington. Presidential Inauguration, she became both the inheritor of a long tradition and a herald of something new. When Amanda Gorman read her poem “The Hill We Climb” at the 2021 U.S.

Poetry can preserve the fleeting present, encircle the past, and help envision alternative futures. In an era as urgent as ours, many poems strive for timelessness precisely by being timely. Good poems capture a moment and sustain it. What we call occasional poetry-verse written for or about an event, often ceremonial-reminds us that all poems have occasions, or should.