Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Poets rarely have the chance to speak directly to history, to bring listening millions together with their words. In 2013, at Barack Obama\u2019s second inauguration, Richard Blanco \u2014 immigrant, gay \u2014 seemed to herald a shining, inclusive America, reading from \u201cOne Today\u201d to a standing ovation: \u201cMy face, your face, millions of faces in morning\u2019s mirrors\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009All of us as vital as the one light we move through.\u201dAmanda Gorman was just 22 when her inaugural poem, \u201cThe Hill We Climb\u201d, read for Joe Biden\u2019s presidency in 2021, made her a breakout star: \u201cFor there is always light, if only we\u2019re brave enough to see it.\/ If only we\u2019re brave enough to be it.\u201d Now, four years on, Donald Trump will take the oath of office for the second time, offering his rejoicing voters a Make America Great Again victory rally, a fireworks display, and three inaugural balls \u2014 but no poet to sound a flourish of trumpets.\u00a0At their best, poets can shine on the big day, capturing dreams and longingsThe tradition of the inaugural poem has been lopsided in the US. Only four presidents, all of them Democrats, have invited a total of six poets to read at their inaugurations \u2014 John F Kennedy, Bill Clinton (twice), Barack Obama (twice) and Joe Biden. At their best, as Gorman and Blanco demonstrate, poets can shine on the big day, capturing dreams and longings or helping define a new presidential era. It\u2019s a tricky genre to pull off \u2014 wisdom so swiftly descends into pomposity, the finest of lines separates the beautiful from the banal.A sharp wind and the glare of light on the snow rescued Robert Frost, the first to start the tradition at Kennedy\u2019s inauguration in 1961. He planned to read \u201cDedication\u201d, which begins cautiously: \u201cSummoning artists to participate\/ In the august occasions of the state\/ Seems something artists ought to celebrate.\u201d That \u201cseems\u201d speaks volumes; the doggerel grows worse: \u201cCourage is in the air in bracing whiffs\/ Better than all the stalemate an\u2019s and ifs.\u201d Fortunately, he never delivered it.In the blurred video from the inauguration, the wind whips up, the paper trembles in Frost\u2019s cold-stiffened hands. He stumbles, once, again: \u201cI can\u2019t see in this light.\u201d From memory, Frost recites \u201cThe Gift Outright\u201d, a far better poem. His white hair flutters like a flag in the rising wind. His voice rings strong and clear, staking a claim: \u201cThe land was ours before we were the land\u2019s\/ She was our land more than a hundred years\/ Before we were her people.\u201dIn the UK, poets laureate are appointed by the monarch \u2014 traditionally paid in a \u201cbutt of canary wine\u201d, they also receive a modest salary. Some, like Imtiaz Dharker, duck the \u201chuge honour\u201d; others gladly step up. When much of the work churned out by poets laureate is glib or forgettable, why do we need a poet at an inauguration, or a coronation? Perhaps it\u2019s because we hope for words that act as signpost and lighthouse; throughout history, we\u2019ve turned to poets, PB Shelley\u2019s \u201cunacknowledged legislators of the world\u201d, for clarity and inspiration, to tell us what we could be as much as what we are. And sometimes, even in the brief annals of inaugural poets, they have. At Bill Clinton\u2019s 1993 inauguration, Maya Angelou reminded all of America of its past of slavery when she read, \u201cOn the Pulse of Morning\u201d: \u201cYou the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought,\/ Sold, stolen, arriving on the nightmare\/ Praying for a dream.\u201d Elizabeth Alexander\u2019s \u201cPraise Song for the Day\u201d, read for Barack Obama\u2019s inauguration in 2009, asked \u201cWhat if the mightiest word is love?\u201d, recasting the idea of national fraternity as \u201clove that casts a widening pool of light\u201d. Turning away from presidents and kings, the UK\u2019s poet laureate Simon Armitage wrote of an anonymous woman, \u201cjust a person like everyone else\u201d, who\u2019s treated herself to \u201cnew shoes\u201d in order to attend King Charles III\u2019s coronation in his 2023 ode, \u201cAn Unexpected Guest\u201d. And though Trump refrained from inviting a poet to speak at his first inauguration, in 2017, poets across America read protest poetry, organising evenings of resistance. Carol Ann Duffy, then serving as the first woman poet laureate of England, had her eye on events across the pond when she wrote \u201cSwearing In\u201d, published in her 2018 collection, Sincerity. \u201cSwearing In\u201d is not an inaugural poem. But it is memorable, opening with a clash of cymbals: \u201cCombover, thatch-fraud, rug-rogue, laquer-lout; twitter-rat, tweet-twat, tribe-gob, muckspout.\u201d Trump, soon to be the 47th President of the United States, may have been wise to sidestep the poets; they do tend to have the last word.\u00a0Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Caf\u00e9 and follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Poets rarely have the chance to speak directly to history, to bring listening millions together with their words. In 2013, at Barack Obama\u2019s second inauguration, Richard<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":170779,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-170778","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170778"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170780,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170778\/revisions\/170780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}