This week's Tapinto.net
You didn't need to watch the inauguration ceremony to know the future of art is in safe hands. While pomp and circumstance commenced once again with a new presidential term and the American government was turning a page, Amanda Gorman summed up in five minutes what we can aspire to as citizens.
Not since Robert Frost recited his poem "The Gift Outright" at John Kennedy's 1961 inauguration, did a poetry reading get so much press coverage and attention from the American public. In Robert Frost's case, the Sun and Wind worked against him and he had to forego his planned speech, "Dedication." Despite the efforts of Richard Nixon trying to block the light so Frost could see the paper, he opted for, "The Gift Outright" a poem he had committed to memory.
Amanda Gorman working in the fine art medium of poetry, comforted and yet challenged us in a little over 700 words reminding us, "For there is always light / if only we’re brave enough to see it / if only we’re brave enough to be it."
Like poets, artists, dancers, and composers before her, Amanda forged through her artistic view and talent, a vision of what we could be as a society.
April 4, 1968, Senator Robert Kennedy spoke to a crowd in Indianapolis, Indiana. He broke the tragic news to those gathered Martin Luther King was shot and killed earlier that night. Kennedy recited the words from his favorite poet Aeschylus, who wrote: "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
The essence of those beautiful words may have been lost that night in the grief of the moment, but the spirit of Aeschylus's words are transposed through the years in the art of Amanda Gorman and other artists to come, that there is always light and we inherited the gift to not just see it, but also to become it.
by Michael Malzone
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