Tuesday
Unless you were a Tom Brady fan or geographical loyalties to Tampa Bay, you had to look elsewhere for thrills during Sunday’s Super Bowl. Who would have predicted that, for many of us, a poem would be the event’s main highlight?
Amanda Gorman’s Super Bowl poem isn’t at the level of the one she read at Joe Biden’s inauguration, in part because it features far less imaginative word play and intricate symbolism. To be sure, she once again drops rhymes, half-rhymes, and internal rhymes into her free verse format, and she has some of her characteristic alliteration, as in,
Let us walk with these warriors,
Charge on with these champions,
And carry forth the call of our captains!
Titling her poem “Chorus of the Captains” in the context of a sport events was a nice touch. And, once again, her delivery was magnetic. As the poem’s purpose was to honor front-line workers, it did its job just fine.
But in many ways, Gorman’s presentation was bigger than the poem itself. As the Washington Post, quoting poet Toi Derricotte, noted, Gorman
has taken an art form that felt inaccessible to some and made it universal. “She seems to have awakened the spirit of poetry the way I think it was intended to be, to be a voice of the people.”
Columbia English professor Sharon Marcus, meanwhile, told that Post that “we’re overdue for a poetic mega idol”:
“There have been celebrity poets for a long time. It’s more unusual to not have a celebrity poet — to have long periods of time where there aren’t celebrity poets — than to have celebrity poets,” said Marcus, who is also the author of The Drama of Celebrity:
Take Walt Whitman. (“A very celebrated, well-known persona. People knew what he looked like.”) Take Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. (“Nobody reads him now, I mean his big poem, ‘Hiawatha,’ is like a nightmare of stereotypes about native peoples,” Marcus said, but he was “known around the world.”)
“The poet has always been this figure of not just writing, but speech and rhetoric and oration,” Marcus added, and there have “always been links between poetry and politics.”
So, she wasn’t surprised to hear of Gorman’s Super Bowl performance.
“Poets used to be kind of like rock stars,” she said, and “who performs at the Super Bowl? Rock and pop stars.”
Here’s the poem:
Chorus of the Captains
Today we honor our three captains
For their actions and impact in
A time of uncertainty and need.
They’ve taken the lead,
Exceeding all expectations and limitations,
Uplifting their communities and neighbors
As leaders, healers, and educators.
James has felt the wounds of warfare,
But this warrior still shares
His home with at-risk kids.
During Covid, he’s even lent a hand
Live-streaming football for family and fans.
Trimaine is an educator who work nonstop,
Providing his community with hotspots,
Laptops, and tech workshops
So his students have all the tools
They need to succeed in life and in school.
Suzie is the ICU nurse manager at a Tampa Hospital.
Her chronicles prove that even in tragedy, hope is possible.
She lost her grandmothers to the pandemic,
And fights to save other lives in the ICU battle zone,
Defining the frontline heroes risking their lives for our own.
Let us walk with these warriors,
Charge on with these champions,
And carry forth the call of our captains!
We celebrate them by acting with courage and compassion,
By doing what is right and just.
For while we honor them today
It is they who every day honor us.
