Bavarian Pre-Alps : Climbing, Hiking & Mountaineering : SummitPost In the final lines of the poem, Gorman uses more instances of repetition in order to talk her way around the country, from the gold-limbed hills of the west to the windswept northeast. In all these places, and more, she concludes, the country will rebuild, reconcile and recover. The people of the country, diverse and beautiful, will rise up and be at the forefront of the future. There is prosopopoeia in gold-limbed hills, giving the west a body; there is enargia in the descriptions of the northeast as windswept and the south as sunbaked; there is appositio in further describing the northeast as where our forefathers first realized revolution; there is epitheton (a pithy descriptor, as in rosy-fingered dawn) in lake-rimmed cities. When the speaker refers to their bronze-pounded chest, the implication is that the chest has undergone difficult situations before, and "every breath" from it is labored. Such as the following lines found at the end of the poem: When day comes, we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid. The Hill We Climb is filled with rich imagery and figurative allusions from culture, history, and the Bible. It is only the first of many ingenious literary devices at work in this piece. (Note that this is one definition of synchysis; another is less organized, taking hyperbaton to extreme disorder. That awareness was heightened by her physical location at the time she delivered this poem: on the very west front of the Capitol, which two weeks earlier had been stormed by terrorists. I have!). As the youngest inaugural poet in history and the first National Youth Poet Laureate, Gorman's performance was an What words does Gorman use to point towards the future? That also indicates that we are the source of the light which I feel is a pretty big message! Gorman echoes her arms dichotomy with the antithesis of blade/bridges. So. can democracy and ideals. Weve seen a forest that would shatter our nation rather than share it, would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy. When day comes we step out of the shade,aflame and unafraid,the new dawn blooms as we free it.For there is always light,if only were brave enough to see it.If only were brave enough to be it. One more note before I dive in: Ive seen a few different transcriptions of The Hill We Climb out there on the internet, and there are some slight variations between them. Im glad you enjoyed it! This is the era of just redemption. That even as we hurt, we hoped; that even as we tired, we tried; that well forever be tied together, victorious. What makes it so rhetorically elegant, though, is the antithesis of descended/raised within that line, particularly since the contrast rests on secondary meanings of the words rather than only their strict function in the sentence. After three lines of parallel structure, the fourth is unlike the others, but connected through the That anaphora and this is the line that gives us the climactic point, bringing us from the past to the future. Complicating the matter is that nation is synecdoche. Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true. The delayed/defeated phrasing and the general cadence reminded me of the legal maxim Justice delayed is justice denied. "blunders become their burdens": "b" sounds We see a form of zeugma again in the next line, successors of a country and a time, before Gorman moves into a short self-identification. Anaphora is a type of repetition that occurs when the poet uses the same word or words at the beginning of multiple lines of text. The Question and Answer section for The Hill We Climb is a great The next lines allude to Gorman herself as a skinny Black girl / descended from slaves and raised by a single mother. She concludes this phrase by describing herself in that very momentreciting a poem she wrote for a president. And yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesnt mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect. Her image of the country is not one thats defeated or failed but one thats still on its way to being what its rhetoric already suggests it is. In the next lines, the speaker says that America and Americans will overcome their differences and be victorious not because they will never again know defeat but because they will never again sow division. They would not, in this scenario, be defeated in their unity. Just is and justice are nearly sound-alikes, and Gorman links them by placing them in parallel position to each other (at the end of the lines and as balancing figures within the chiasmus) as well as through antisthecon, a device which substitutes a sound within a word. You may notice that I mark a lot of small omissions as either ellipsis or zeugma, and often I wont comment on them. "interrupted by intimidation": "int" sounds The anaphora on Somehow carries us to the next thought, which similarly acknowledges that past/present/future tension in the comparison between broken and unfinished (syncrisis rather than antithesis, for the two items are not really in opposition to each other). We cannot, really, witness a nation. Teaching Poetic Devices Using "The Hill We Climb" - The eNotes Blog She is standing at the inauguration ceremony of the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden, talking about herself standing there reading a poem. That well forever be tied together, victorious, In the next lines, readers should take a moment to consider how the examples of alliteration in the lines work together to give rhythm to a poem that has no clear metrical pattern. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. She depicts the American people as the light and the hope of the future. resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss thenovel. The Hill We Climb study guide contains a biography of Amanda Gorman, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. Here is an analysis of some of the poetic devices used in this poem. Both verbally and visually, Gorman participated in a reclamation of that space for the America she describes as being possible, the forged union of purpose. She does this through enallage, a device which substitutes semantically equivalent but grammatically different constructions.
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