JFYNet Podcast – FEBRUARY 2021, English Professor Steven Dooner with Quincy College GREG: In celebration of Black History Month, today’s podcast features an analysis of the poem The Hill We Climb as presented by Amanda Gorman during the inauguration of President Joe Biden on January 20th. It features Quincy College English Professor Steven Dooner presenting his analysis of the rich allusions, references and wordplay delivered during this historic moment. The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman When day comes we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry, a sea we must wade We've braved the belly of the beast We've learned that quiet isn't always peace And the norms and notions of what just is Isn’t always just-ice And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it Somehow we do it Somehow we've weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken but simply unfinished We the successors of a country and a time Where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one And yes we are far from polished far from pristine but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect JFYNetWorks | 44 School Street |Suite 1010 | Boston, MA 02108 | 617-338-0815 1 [email protected] | www.JFYNet.org | podcast at: https://jfynetworks.podbean.com/ JFYNet Podcast – FEBRUARY 2021, English Professor Steven Dooner with Quincy College We are striving to forge a union with purpose To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us but what stands before us We close the divide because we know, to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another We seek harm to none and harmony for all Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true: That even as we grieved, we grew That even as we hurt, we hoped That even as we tired, we tried That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious Not because we will never again know defeat but because we will never again sow division Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree And no one shall make them afraid If we’re to live up to our own time Then victory won’t lie in the blade But in all the bridges we’ve made That is the promised glade The hill we climb If only we dare It's because being American is more than a pride we inherit, JFYNetWorks | 44 School Street |Suite 1010 | Boston, MA 02108 | 617-338-0815 2 [email protected] | www.JFYNet.org | podcast at: https://jfynetworks.podbean.com/ JFYNet Podcast – FEBRUARY 2021, English Professor Steven Dooner with Quincy College it’s the past we step into and how we repair it We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy And this effort very nearly succeeded But while democracy can be periodically delayed it can never be permanently defeated In this truth in this faith we trust For while we have our eyes on the future history has its eyes on us This is the era of just redemption We feared at its inception We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour but within it we found the power to author a new chapter To offer hope and laughter to ourselves So while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe? Now we assert How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us? We will not march back to what was but move to what shall be A country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free JFYNetWorks | 44 School Street |Suite 1010 | Boston, MA 02108 | 617-338-0815 3 [email protected] | www.JFYNet.org | podcast at: https://jfynetworks.podbean.com/ JFYNet Podcast – FEBRUARY 2021, English Professor Steven Dooner with Quincy College We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation Our blunders become their burdens But one thing is certain: If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left with Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west, we will rise from the windswept northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states, we will rise from the sunbaked south We will rebuild, reconcile and recover and every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful will emerge, battered and beautiful When day comes we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid The new dawn blooms as we free it For there is always light, JFYNetWorks | 44 School Street |Suite 1010 | Boston, MA 02108 | 617-338-0815 4 [email protected] | www.JFYNet.org | podcast at: https://jfynetworks.podbean.com/ JFYNet Podcast – FEBRUARY 2021, English Professor Steven Dooner with Quincy College if only we’re brave enough to see it If only we’re brave enough to be it GREG: This podcast was created by JFYNetWorks, a Boston based nonprofit provider of online learning programs to schools, students, and parents. JFY’s individualized, self-paced curricula help raise individual and school performance measures by maintaining grade level skills and combating learning loss. JFY provides online ELA and math curricula aligned to state and college standards from grade 5 through high school, with personal support online and via telephone from friendly learning specialists like yours truly. For JFYNetWorks, I'm GREG Cunningham. Steve Dooner has been teaching and performing literature for over 30 years. A favorite professor among Quincy College students, his classes are filled with the energy and passion Professor Dooner harbors for literature. His professional experiences demonstrate he is not just an instructor of literature but is also a student constantly learning. PROFESSOR DOONER: I am a teacher and started teaching back in 1987 and I hope I don't look that old. But I have been teaching for 30 something years now, right…33 years, and I started teaching in graduate school as a grad student, and I've been trying to get this gig right all these years. I love teaching literature. My field was originally Shakespeare and also romantic literature and Shelley. But I also loved theater; I was always a theater kid. Growing up, I performed on stage and musicals, and then I started doing Shakespeare at an early age, and I really loved directing Shakespeare over the years, directing plays like Macbeth, As You Like It. Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet. Those are all things that I've done Midsummer Night's Dream three or four times. So, I love directing in the theater. I've written a few plays. Lizzie of Fall River was the play I wrote that about 4000 people came to see it in 1999 and we revised that a few years ago and another 4000 people came to see it. So, there was an enormous amount of interest in Lizzie as a subject, and it really does just bring in the people. People have now been performing that play, outside of my original productions, and I'm selling the play, so that's great. Another thing is, I've acted on stage. What else? I've worked as a journalist. I've edited dissertations for books on whaling and books on the Boston mob. I've been a literary student my whole life. I'm devoted to try to crack the nut of teaching difficult subjects, to students who are being exposed to this stuff for the first time. GREG: An inauguration is by definition a historical moment, but Amanda Gorman’s performance may have done more to define the moment, this historical moment, than any other event of that day. PROFESSOR DOONER: I think so, because for me, the poem really calls on so much of American history and American literature. It's sort of a mini course in American literature. If you actually look at all the allusions that are present in the poem, it evokes very powerful voices in the African American experience, but also, I have a list of all the kind of influences right here. There's obviously a connection she feels to Phyllis Wheatley, she proposes a new muse and in The New York Times, it was printed that she wants a new muse to inspire the poetry of democracy, and you immediately think of Phillis Wheatley's to his excellently George Washington. JFYNetWorks | 44 School Street |Suite 1010 | Boston, MA 02108 | 617-338-0815 5 [email protected] | www.JFYNet.org | podcast at: https://jfynetworks.podbean.com/ JFYNet Podcast – FEBRUARY 2021, English Professor Steven Dooner with Quincy College But then, also, she has connections to Abraham Lincoln to the Gettysburg Address and the second inaugural address to the African American preaching tradition. The church tradition of great preachers like Martin Luther King Jr., Maya Angelou's poetry, Still I Rise is evoked in this poem as well as, Paul Laurence Dunbar bars poem Sympathy, from which the phrase I've heard the cage birds sing comes from.