Summary
Highlights
Gorman introduces her poem, 'In This Place: An American Lyric', stating that a poem exists in the footfalls of halls and the quiet beat of seats, where America writes a whispered lyric. She finds this poem in the 'heavy grace' and 'lined face' of noble buildings, like those where collections have burned and been reborn, and in places like Boston's Copley Square where protest chants rise above hatred.
She locates a poem in Charlottesville, referencing the tiki torch rallies and the 'men so white they gleam blue', contrasting them with the enduring bloom of 'Heather Heyer' in a meadow of resistance. This highlights the struggle against hate and the memory of those who opposed it.
Gorman sees a poem in the 'great sleeping giant' of Lake Michigan, defiantly raising its blue head to Milwaukee and Chicago, a poem 'begun long ago'. She also finds it in the resilience of flood-stricken areas of Florida and East Texas, where streets become rivers, and common courage is shown by people like 23-year-old Jesus Contreras, who rescues others from floodwaters.
The poem continues in Los Angeles, where a single mother in Watts teaches black and brown students to spell out their thoughts, hoping her daughter might write this poem. In California, thousands of undocumented students march fearlessly, and her friend Rosa finds power to bloom, becoming the 'bedrock of her community', embodying the truth that hope is stubborn and dreams cannot be stopped.
Gorman emphasizes that this is 'our nation', 'our America', an American lyric 'by the people': the poor, Protestants, Muslims, Jews, natives, immigrants, black, brown, blind, brave, undocumented, undeterred, women, men, non-binary, white, trans, and allies. She declares that 'tyrants fear the poet' and that it's a duty to 'show it, not slow it', bestowing hope like a wick to be lit.
The poem speaks of rewriting the story of a city 'depleted but not defeated', and a history that 'need not be repeated'. She concludes that America is a nation 'composed but not completed', and that there's a poem in every American who rewrites this nation's story, breathing hope into the 'palimpsest of time'. This signifies that the American poem is continuously being written, not ended, and its dwelling place is 'here and now', at the 'yellow song of dawn's bell', where a new lyric is just beginning to be told.