Amanda gorman

Wednesday

Oliver Wiseman

DeSantis, Musk and the tech civil war behind our politics

Is Ron DeSantis’s decision to launch his presidential bid on a Twitter hangout with Elon Musk this evening evidence of a fatally online campaign or a smart if risky way to inject some juice into a candidacy that some have written off as dead on arrival? The only honest answer to that question is that we’ll soon find out. My own two cents: a more traditional launch is something of a non-event anyway — an undercooked stump speech, a carefully selected cross section of the population waving banners in the background. There’ll be plenty of those over the coming months, so why not try something different?  DeSantis’s Twitter launch isn’t just a moment worth paying attention to for its electoral consequences.

ron desantis
amanda gorman
Cockburn

Poet laureate can’t define a ‘ban’

Amanda Gorman, the young female poet who read at Joe Biden's inauguration lamented on Tuesday night that her poem had been banned by a Florida school library. “Just found out my inaugural poem 'The Hill We Climb' has been banned from an elementary school in Miami-Dade County because it causes "confusion and indoctrination,” America's first National Youth Poet Laureate tweeted.  The poem, however, was never banned. Instead, according to the Miami-Dade school district, “The Hill We Climb” was moved from the elementary section of the library to the middle-school section.  “It was determined at the school that ‘The Hill We Climb’ is better suited for middle-school students and, it was shelved in the middle-school section of the media center.

Sunday

Micah Mattix

On receiving books in the mail

I receive a lot of books in the mail. Perhaps you do, too. Some of these I order. Most come from publishers or authors hoping for a review. A few are gifts. I prefer to buy books at used bookstores. You never know what they might have on hand, and there’s nothing better than discovering a gem of a book by a writer you’ve never heard of. Plus, the price is always right. Independent bookstores are great, too. I’m no snob. I bought a book just the other day at the gamified Barnes and Noble in town — the atrociously overrated Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman, who read at Joe Biden’s inauguration (more on that at some point, perhaps). But I prefer independent bookstores because, like at used bookstores, there’s an element of surprise in the store’s stock.

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Tuesday

Joel Diggory

Why does this activist think a white person can’t translate Amanda Gorman?

From our UK edition

She is the darling of the nation, the star of the inauguration, the first US National Youth Poet Laureate: she is Amanda Gorman, the person who serenaded America and the new president with a SLAM poem. Naturally, of course, Gorman's poems have become best-sellers, and she was praised by just about everyone. Now though, she appears to have gotten lost in translation. Gorman's verse is stuffed with clichés, so you can't imagine it would take a particularly good writer to translate her. But Dutch publisher Meulenhoff managed to find an International Man Booker-winner to do so: Marieke Lucas Rijneveld. Gorman herself approved of this decision. Now, though, the wisdom of the internet has spoken, and Rijneveld has resigned. Why? Because Rijneveld is white.

Thursday

Melanie McDonagh

Amanda Gorman was let down by a terrible poem

From our UK edition

Congratulations to Amanda Gorman, who is, at 22, the youngest ever poet for the inauguration of a US president. She stole the show with her style and poise – fabulous look, tremendous assurance. The pundits are united in their view that a Star Is Born; Michelle Obama has given her imprimatur; ditto Oprah. Trouble is the actual poem. Amanda was given the theme of America United. The Hill We Climb is the result. Without pretending to be in the FR and Queenie Leavis league when it comes to literary sensibility, I couldn’t make sense of it. I mean, I got bits of it, I got the sentiment, I got the stream of consciousness, the emotion, I got the sub-Martin Luther King flow.