My name is [IT] and this is MY poem. And oh boy do I have a question for you, have you ever climbed a hill, I know I have. And wow was it a MASSIVE hill indeed. Today I am here to present with my partner [CS]. The title of this poem is The Hill we Climb written by Amanda Gorman, it was read during the inauguration of Joe Biden as a celebration to him being in office. The poem talks about problems that take place in America and the path that can be followed together in order to fix them.

Throughout all of our lives, we’ve had to climb hills and mount obstacles to reach new heights and pass limits, and America has had to overcome the same obstacles throughout its history. From our first revolutions, to the civil war, to the suffragist movements, to the civil rights movements, and all the wars fought after that, our country and the people within it have fought long and hard to reach the place where we our today, overcoming many a hill upon the journey here, and Amanda Gorman’s poem summarizes this perfectly.

One reason that this poem is as great as it is comes from its uses of literary devices. The poem is able to convey its feelings and solutions it attempts to provide effectively through the use of metaphors and imagery combined together. This can be seen with the line “We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it.” This line depicts the United States of America as being shattered through imagery and ties it to what feelings and reasons it tries to get across using that line as a metaphor.

“The Hill We Climb” also really stuck with me after I heard it during Biden’s inauguration in 2020, but one of the lines that stuck with me the most is when Amanda Gorman says “But one thing is certain: if we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and changes our children’s birthright.” The line personally resonated with me because it reflects morals that I view the world using, and at least try to act accordingly. It makes me feel like I resonate more with the poem than I could without that line being in place, and I think many readers can agree with that as well. Also, on a side note, I think it at least briefly draws the listeners or readers attention by using a common phrase and expanding upon it, that being “Might with right”, which could draw a distracted audience to pay attention.

Amanda Gorman describes herself as a weird child who felt like an outcast and claims she still feels that way. This can be a reason for why one message of the poem is working together to solve a larger problem. Amanda could have had little friends as a child due to feeling like a social outcast who did not fit in, this could have led to her urge to write about a need to work with others to fix a problem together.

We would like to thank the following:
The Library of Congress for where we read the poem;
The Yume Nikki and Yume Nikki 2 OSTs for our intermission music;
OBS recording studio;
Soundtrap editing studio;
Britannica for the author biography;

THE END