Reading this poetry collection was a chore. 90% of it is redundant and repetitive and though a handful of poems are really, really good, I’m still debating whether those handful of good poems can make up for the rest of it. 

The lyricism is really beautiful, but the poetry itself was overly pedantic. So many references and definitions that were unnecessary and just felt like academic flexing, rather than providing something insightful and personal, which is what I like about poetry. 

Some of the best advice I’ve heard about poetry is: When you try to write about everything, you write about nothing. I feel like Amanda Gorman was trying to make really powerful and generalized statements about every single injustice that was happening in America and although she was successful with a handful of poems, the majority of them felt shallow, impersonal, and superficial. Especially all the COVID poems. 

All of the COVID poems were boiled down to “it sucks we had to wear masks and stay inside and lots of people died from illness,” and they were incredibly cheesy. Not even addressing the most egregious injustices and tragedies during the pandemic, like the government’s lack of care for COVID affected incarcerated people or how hospitals didn’t have enough space or how people went to Target to shop for fun because they were bored during a GLOBAL PANDEMIC. Also, I think it’s presumptuous that someone who went to private school from K-12 felt they were able to speak on behalf of the American pandemic experience, when the Americans who COVID hit the hardest were poor and still had to work at the height of the pandemic. I can appreciate what she was trying to achieve with this collection, but it was a let down.