The Seasonal Reading Challenge discussion

This is the discussion thread for the Summer 2023 Group Read Call Us What We Carry in the category Non Fiction - Poetry. Please post your comments here. This thread is not restricted to those choosing this book for task 20.10, feel free to join in the discussion. Warning- spoilers ahead!

The requirement for task 20.10: You must participate in the book's discussion thread below with at least one post about the contents of the book or your reaction to the book after you have read the book.

Do what I did not do, get the audiobook. Not being much of a poetry reader, it would of helped with the rhythm and mood of the poems.
Gorman pulls from the isolation, stepping back out with masks, healthcare workers, dealing with death while not being able to be with loved ones. Pulls from history with the Spanish Influenza, Aids epidemic.
I found many to be beautiful, bittersweet, blunt (necessarily so), and hopeful.

Out of everything that was going on during the pandemic, I had forgotten about all the wildfires going on in the world, Australia, the rainforests, and even here in the United States (oh yeah, no walks, all windows closed, ordering more filters....forgotten).

I'm of mixed emotions on this one. I started out listening to the audio version, but when that ended I felt I had to see the written text as well. With poetry the "picture" of the words on a page sometimes makes a big difference. I enjoyed the earlier poems best and by the time I reached the end of the text I felt the author was trying too hard to cheer for the underdog. I am in favor of supporting those people who, through no fault of their own, have to work harder than others to achieve the same goal, but to expect special treatment because of their perceived disability or condition is not the answer. The ending poems in this collection seemed to me like a call which could easily inspire a riot.

Amy B

I'll admit that poetry has never been my thing. I was an English major in college and can still (if I really concentrate), pull apart someone else's writing, but have never had the attention span for poetry. The one exception lately was Ada Limon. I read Bright Dead Things and then immediately devoured The Carrying.
Amanda Gorman is very talented and I'm in awe of the accomplishment of being named the nation's Youth Poet Laureate. That being said, I had a hard time really connecting with the poetry in this book. The topics were important and deep, no question, but I really had a hard time digging into them and feeling them. Maybe I was tired. Am very curious what others thought.

I listened to the audiobook.

It's very rare for poetry to make a big impact on me, but I wanted to read this book because I admire the author. I recognize that as a collection of poetry, this is probably a 5 star book. My personal enjoyment was somewhere between 2 and 3 stars, which I will mark as 3 stars on GR.

I was interesting to read poems that were based on a very specific time and place (USA during the pandemic and Trump presidency). The author is very talented and I hope she continues to record history in this way.

I selected this group read book because I listened to the author speak on inauguration day.

I listened to the audiobook. The narrator spoke with urgency. It was engaging.

I should have had the book to read as I was listening. There were times I had no idea what I was listening to. Was this poem after poem? Or were there paragraphs introducing the poems? I think there were. I didn't always realize when the poem started and ended. A lot of it seemed like an essay to me, but it's been a long time since I studied literature.

I wish I could say I enjoyed this. It's not the fault of the writer. I'm just not interested any poetry. There were parts that I found more interesting than others. Amy B mentioned she had a hard time connecting with the poetry. I could say the same with the qualifier that I've never connected to any poetry. Maybe it's like abstract art? Some people understand it, but to people like me it's just a mess on a canvas that I don't understand and am annoyed by my failure to understand.

I read this opposed to audio as I usually really enjoy poetry and do much better seeing the words displayed on the page, and I was genuinely worried to post my thoughts on this one because the overall view on the books goodreads review page was outstanding success, and boy I just hated almost everything in this book.

I thought it was just me being uneducated and not appreciating the type of poetry style but it just did not make sense because this is one of two poetry books I could not wrap my liking around, I think it felt like it was written by a juvenile with lack of writing skill/experience, it felt like they were trying to over emphasise that she was an author writing poems because almost every sentence or line felt like it was words thrown at a wall with the hope they will stick together, blend and make sense and to my overall opinion they absolutely did not, I would read an entire repetitive page and think 'was that supposed to have a hidden meaning because what on earth is the author trying to convey here?'

If you do not want to read my thoughts as they are too long, here is an overall summary of my feelings; repetitive, over poetically emphasised, juvenile, gibberish.

Very disappointing

Let me start off by saying reading poetry has always been a challenge for me. I gave this book a try because I am always willing to try out a book that's been highly recommended. I think this might be the first serious book of poems I've actually connected with an enjoyed.

I think the way that the book was structured, how they arranged the poems is what drew me in. It started off with poems that I felt really connected to. I recently have experienced a lot of loss and have been going through the grieving process. Reading the early poems about isolation and loss was something that I really could feel deeply.

The poems then began to connect into the pandemic and focused a lot on the 1918 pandemic and its impact on people. I loved how the poems made you wonder if the author was describing the past or the present. It was important to the structure of the book to have the reader making those past/present connections because it allowed me, a white, cis-gender woman, to continue making those connections with things that I would not have personal experience with, or may not otherwise have noticed.

In particular, the poems "The Surveyed" followed up by "____[Gated]" was a beautiful way to help me connect all of the feelings I was having with solid words. After finishing Surveyed, I was struggling with how to complete the connections I was feeling with the comparisons with Panpax/Pandem with the relationships with Jim Crow/Segregation and the current issues of 2020. "____[Gated]" put my feelings into words.

I loved this book and will happily recommend it to my friends and family. I think poetry will continue to be a struggle for me, but I am so glad that I gave this one a chance.

I too, struggled with this book. I started out with the audio but had a hard time following. I switched to reading the book and understood better. It helped to see the format and know when I was reading footnotes, prose, etc. I found the poems about the Spanish influenza especially interesting as I compared them to the Covid pandemic. I had trouble following when she used historical documents and changed them. Overall, I gave it 3 stars.

I know nothing about poetry, really. Before I started participating in the SRC, I would have told you I hated all poetry. But, over the years, through this and other reading challenges, I have found some poets I can connect with and, overall, I enjoy their work. Amanda Gorman has just joined that list, for me.

Like many others, I became aware of Gorman on inauguration day. After hearing her speak and learning that she narrated the audiobook, I decided to listen to the collection. I think she's a phenomenal spoken word poet. Her inflection and cadence make a big difference in the effectiveness of some of the poems and, in turn, how how connected and emotionally affected I was by them. On the other hand, I think there are some poems that were less understandable in this format. Erasure poems, as I understand them, are exiting texts in which parts/passages are blacked out. As such, I think it would be much easier to glean meaning from them visually. From reading online reviews, the collection also appears to have some print effects (poems that take shapes of a flag, an urn, a whale, etc) that give the words extra meaning that you cannot get from the spoken word. That being the case, I'd like to pick up a physical copy of the book and read it again one of these days.

I bought both the audio and the hardcopy of this book because I think both have something different to offer. So I had the physical book in my hand while listening to Gorman read and I thought it was a great way to experience the book.
First of all, I think the way the author plays with words is amazing - both the way that the words sound and how they are spelled. I think she did a great job going in and out of history from the covid pandemic to the 1918 flu and AIDS - it made the experiences seem more universally human. I loved the way she wove in the imagery of ships and connected them both to the pandemic and race.
I think the whole collection is a good exploration of what the year 2020 was like - with cycles of despair and hope - reaching back to the past and toward the future.
My favorite poem in the collection was "The Truth in One Nation"

After reading others’ reviews, I decided to read along with listening. I was so impressed with Amanda Gorman’s reading at the inauguration, her beautiful delivery and powerful words, that I especially looked forward to hearing her voice reading this collection of poems. Having the print version at hand definitely added a lot, as some of the poems were in shapes or had other structures that would be impossible to convey with audio. This collection contains a lot of pandemic (COVID and 1918 and AIDS) and racial justice issues, as well as the inauguration poem, The Hill We Climb, which was inspirational to revisit.

I almost never read poetry, certainly not a whole book of it, despite being a literature major (or maybe because of that!) I find most modern poetry abstract and abstruse, that is, I don't know what they are talking about! And I don't find the language evocative. But I was impressed by Amanda Gorman at the inauguration and I loved this book!

It goes through the arc of the pandemic, racial protests, and the election and insurrection and ends with connection and hope. Her style is in the vein of "Hamilton", that is hip-hop with its clever plays on words. Her subject matter is accessible but she often uses original descriptions or comparisons. She has some interesting themes, such as the 1918 era when there was both a pandemic and race riots. Although she is wonderful to hear, it's important to see this book in print because she often plays around with how words are displayed on the page - shapes, typefaces, words omitted, etc. The best is probably to listen while reading to get the full effect.

I came to an enjoyment of poetry when I was finally able to break the habit of chopping it up by putting an imaginary period at the end of each line. I think listening to a lot of Shakespeare plays helped, too. I read this book in print, however. I'm glad because of the way the words were set, but you have all convinced me to listen and read simultaneously when I give it another go. I thought Gorman did a nice job with Covid and the emotions surrounding the pandemic. Blending past and present was effective as well.

i came across this today - i think its not behind a paywall - but she wrote a poem about the sinking of the migrant ship off Greece a few weeks ago:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/15/op...

I'm not huge on poetry though mostly because I struggle to understand. I'd probably enjoy it more if I read it with others and got guidance along with the reads.

I picked to read this one because I've read the others (group reads) but also, from a workshop I attended earlier this year which made poetry sounds so interesting even if they are actually a lot of work in terms of looking up some words and even author's backgrounds to assist in understanding their works. What I really liked in this collection is that some of these are already in the book! Readers were already helped along with the footnotes.

While quite a few of the poems went over my head, there were a few I quite enjoyed. Even if the subject matter is really quite depressing.

Overall, I thought Gorman's collection was successful as both an examination and time-capsule of 2020-2021. Like others, I think she really shone when pulling in different parts of history and other studies (one of the poems I responded to most was when she was talking about the stereotypical behavior of caged animals and comparing it to people in isolation). I thought the collection would have been stronger with a bit more editing. To create that much work in such a small timeframe, not all of the poems felt they were worthy of inclusion (not bad, just not as developed/successful).

Bookwrm526

I don't read a ton of poetry, but I do enjoy it, so I was glad to have the push to read this one. I very much enjoyed her reading at the inauguration, and the collection did not disappoint for me.

Like with any type of collection of work, some were better/more impactful/more enjoyable, etc., but overall I found it a strong collection. The poems about the isolation and struggles of COVID hit hard, as I have heretofore avoided reading many things about or set during this time. Sadly, a lot of the optimism in those poems, especially at the end, doesn't seem to have materialized.

I very much enjoyed the visual nature of some of the poems, which is not something I have encountered in many poetry collections I have read!

Poetry is not a genre that I often select. I chose this book because I was so impressed with the author's reading at the 2021 Presidential Inauguration. The history that was intertwined in many of the selections was quite interesting. This book displayed how beautiful and lyrical the written word can be in the hands of a talented poet.