"We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be..."

Biggest take away from the Inauguration of President Joe Biden? People finally speaking in complete sentences and without vicious bigoted malice.

One aspect (out of a million) missing from -45's "presidency" was the care and proper feeding of language. It was all but abused as complete sentences, complete intelligent thoughts were non-existent. Where words were devoid of truth and clarity, distorted to antagonize and gaslight, wielded as a weapon to be divisive and push misleading propaganda --- and sometimes just outright misspelled. Covfeve hamberders anyone? Like I said, abused. Some irreversible damage has been done having lying sacks of traitorous turds distort words and verbally abuse a nation day in and day out for four years, but (thankfully) today the proper use of language is on the road to restoration.

Amanda Gorman dropped the mic with her poem "The Hill We Climb", and it was the right language, the right tone to usher in Biden and Kamala Harris as our newly and legally elected president and vice president, and carry us into a difficult reassembling of our democracy. You can read the full poem here and prep a purchase of the upcoming collection where the inaugural poem will reside, but hearing Gorman speak gives the words room to really resonate. 

Gorman, who hails from Los Angeles, California and was specifically chosen by First Lady Dr. Jill Biden to speak at the inaugural, joins a small, but esteemed roster of poets who have set us onto a new path under new leadership here in the US. Yet, her being one of only five poets (and the youngest at that) to have spoken at a presidential inaugural speaks volumes about how little poetry and language as art is cherished and encouraged at the national level. We definitely need to do better. As poet laureate Rita Dove once said, "poetry is language at it's most distilled and most powerful" and in these fraught times we should look to such words like Gorman's to help guide us up and onward.

"The hill we climb 

If only we dare 

It's because being American is more than a pride we inherit

It’s the past we step into and how we repair it..."