Four years of Trump may have numbed us to the pompous, bombastic, and blustering airs of his speech, and we may have forgotten the eloquence of pre-Trumpian rhetoric. However, as his presidency comes to an end, there seems to be a resurgence, or even an advancement, of artistry in language, as the swearing in of President Joe Biden represents, perhaps, a time of change and unity through poetry.
The poet that marked Biden's presidential campaign was Irish wordsmith, Seamus Heaney. A poet who wrote with brilliance on hatred, conflict and strife, Biden's summoning of his profoundic spirit called for reconciliation in a time where the US was torn. Biden quoted him at the Democratic party nomination ceremony, saying: "the longed-for tidal wave / Of justice can rise up / And hope and history rhyme".
Seamus Heaney was a quiet soul whose voice carried his wise and noble character, a rare bay of peace in a sea of some very loud and very problematic poets, the likes of the anti-Semitic T.S. Eliot or the bigoted-in-multifaceted-fashion Philip Larkin. Biden quotes from his translation of Sophocles' Philoctetes, depicting a division between the eponymous character, left on Lemnos with a festering snake bite, and Odysseus, who required his help in the Trojan War. It spoke directly to Northen Ireland's conflicts, and now, Biden makes an inspired decision to use it as an appeal to Americans. Robert Fitzroy Foster, Irish critic and historian, says that his use of "an arcane poetic tag is an interesting, highly literate and culturally ambitious approach". In an era where politicians' choice of poetry is often bland and unoriginal, Biden marks his genuine appreciation of the art.
At his inauguration, Biden brought back the inaugural poet, absent from Trump's 2017 ceremony (which could be rather telling of the functionally illiterate former president), with Amanda Gorman, the first American Youth Poet Laureate and the youngest poet to perform at an inauguration ceremony. She aimed to "use my words to envision a way in which our country can still come together and can still heal". Her poem, "The Hill We Climb", written partly during the insurrection that stormed the US Capitol, does just that. Speaking with passion and purpose, she flows with joy, conviction and ambition, she delivers a poetic battle cry: "we will rebuild, reconcile and recover".
President Biden and Amanda Gorman mark a new movement that has electrified the US, prompting a surge of admiration for poetry, a lyric adrenaline that bursts to reanimate politics. Perhaps, this is an opportunity to "make hope and history rhyme".
