Listen to the Poets

There's a lyric that I include in my bio:

"Listen to the Poets. They're right, but we don't know it." It's from Kim Harris' song, Dust.

This gentle urging is the foundation of why I serve artists: they are the arbiters of truth. The artist strives to interpret, expose and help us understand all layers of existence. They squint their eyes in the dark that we blindly stumble through to see what we're missing. It is within art that we can more deeply understand ourselves, each other and the world.

There is no doubt to me why people are saying Amanda Gorman stole the show at 2021's inauguration ceremony. With her poetry and performance, she created something new that came straight from her heart to ours in a way that touched a deep truth and hope for this time.

The way she honoured words and their shape, respected the use of silence and delicately and deliberately expressed meaning with her arms, her hands, her fingers, her eyes, her posture. Her yellow coat shining in the sun. Her black hair carefully woven high, haloed by a red band. It was all resonating as art embodied.

The artist today, more than ever, is inseparable from the art and so it matters that she, the self-described “skinny Black girl, descended from slaves and raised by a single mother” stood on that platform for this day. She, in many ways, was speaking from the voice of all those oppressed and traumatized by the past four years (and so many years beyond).

She even wrote through and about the attack on the Capitol, using the ugliest of fuels to create a beautiful light.

At the end, she picked up her cadence and said:

"The new dawn blooms, as we free it. For there was always light, if only we're brave enough to see it. If only, we're brave enough to be it."

Brave enough to be it. To me, this is a call to not just listen to the poets, but to recognize their calls to act. Because they're right, but we don't know it.