JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
After an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Macklin Good last week, Amanda Gorman wrote and shared a poem.
AMANDA GORMAN: (Reading) They say she is no more. That there her absence roars, blood-blown, like a rose.
SUMMERS: Gorman is the country's first youth poet laureate, known for reciting one of her works at President Joe Biden's inauguration back in 2021. She wrote about where change might emerge amid...
GORMAN: (Reading) The bare riot of candles, dark fury of flowers, pure howling of hymns.
SUMMERS: Amanda Gorman read the poem for us when we reached her earlier today. I asked her...
What made you want to write about the events that took place in Minnesota?
GORMAN: To be honest, I didn't want to write about it, but I felt like I owed it to Renee to at least try and make the attempt. I'd read that she was a writer and poet in her own right. And so even if what had happened was horrendous, I felt she was a shining example of what language can do.
SUMMERS: And you write....
GORMAN: (Reading) If...
SUMMERS: ...If for us...
GORMAN: ...For us she arose. Somewhere, in the pitched deep of our grief, crouches our power.
SUMMERS: Amanda, what do you think the power is, and how do you think people should use it?
GORMAN: I think the answer is in your question. The power is the people, and it's always lied there. And I think the movements and the protests that we're seeing right now is evidence of that - that when we unite together around our shared values, there's some real shifts that can happen. And so the power lies in how deeply we can love each other and how fervently we can show up for each other when one of us has fallen.
SUMMERS: You also write that change requires that labor and bitter anger be replaced by love and the better angels of our nature. Say more. What did you mean by that?
GORMAN: For me, it was less so to replace anger because I think anger can actually be a really incredible mechanism for change, but it has to be paired and activated with this love and humanity towards a greater good. That line actually came from Lincoln's inaugural address - his first one. Here as the president, he was speaking to as divided and polarized of America as we've really ever seen. And if he can see, oh, there might be a door we can walk through, which is actually our greater angels within ourselves, then maybe that's a message that we can honor today.
SUMMERS: I mean, it's clear in your writing that you've called the shooting a murder. You've said elsewhere that you're horrified at the violence of ICE. Many people might not see it that way. The Trump administration has defended the actions of the federal agent who killed Renee Macklin Good. They've cited self-defense. For those people, what do you hope they take away from your poem?
GORMAN: I think very rarely is my poetry trying to convince anyone. Actually, it's trying to meet people where they are. And I hope that anyone who reads the poem can take a moment to pause and think about where we are as a country if we are scrabbling and fighting over a cold-hearted murder and trying to politicize it to agendas for larger projects. And so whether you're on the right, whether you're on the left, whether you like my poetry, whether you don't, I'm trying to create language that could remind us of what is possible when we listen to our higher selves. And those higher selves have to mourn and feel the pain and the grief when one of us has been killed.
SUMMERS: We've been speaking with Amanda Gorman about her original poem. It's called "For Renee Nicole Good." Thank you so much.
GORMAN: Thank you.
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