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The Vital Power of Youth and Words: 22-year-old Poetess Amanda Gorman to Perform at Joe Biden’s Inauguration
A Rock, a River, a Tree
Maya Angelou, On The Pulse of Morning
Hosts of species long departed
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
Amanda Gorman looks a bit younger than her age of 22 says, and at 22, the Los Angeles born activist has already reached heights that very few people have. A Harvard University student, she made her way as a Youth Delegate to the United Nations in 2013 after listening Pakistani survivor Malala Yousafzai speak. Her own words made her poet. She became the first National Youth Poet Laureate in 2017 and ambitions to run for President in the United States sometimes.
A young poet? Think again. Arthur Rimbaud was a teenager when he composed some of his most famous poems.
Gorman is a poet, an activist and a social entrepreneur. Period. She is a leader whose voice is already vital. She created a youth writing program, read poetry on MTV and at the Library of Congress, and she just authored the foreword of Vital Voices: 100 Women Using Their Power to Empower (Assouline). No wonder her portrait, created by Gayle Kabaker, made the cover of a book that includes Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, Fashion Designer Diane Von Furstenberg, and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
No surprise either: her foreword is a poem. It is about words after all, and sharing them.