18 pages • 36 minutes read
Amanda GormanThe Miracle of Morning
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Hope
“The Miracle of Morning” is a hopeful poem, conveying a message of optimism in every stanza even while acknowledging pain and suffering. The poem’s title introduces this theme with the word “miracle.” A miracle is an event that can only happen through hope and faith in the future; it is a word that often appears in a religious context, one that is defined by faith in abstract ideas and unknowable truths. The inclusion of the word “morning” in the title adds the hopeful tone here, as morning often represents new beginnings, the future, and hope. Morning brings about light after a long night of darkness, and life seems to begin anew with this light, both literally and figuratively. Gorman reinforces the spiritual quality of the morning when she calls it ”golden” (Line 3) and “magical” (Line 4) at the end of the first stanza. Magic, like faith, asks believers for acceptance without proof, and identifying the morning with magic emphasizes the possibility that something larger than humanity is at work.
The third stanza picks up the theme of hope when the speaker asks how society will succeed and, with this questions, presumes that there is no doubt that society will succeed. For example, the speaker uses definitive language when they claims that “we will defeat both despair and disease” (Line 15) and that “we will discover clarity / […] find solidarity” (Lines 21-22). The repetition of the definitive future tense leaves no room for misunderstanding: Gorman believes the country will recover from its current struggles and her use of language reflects her certainty.
The poem concludes with more amplification of the poet’s hope in the potential of society to come together. Gorman boldly predicts the end of the struggle and says there will only be more strength after the pain has subsided. The entire poem is future-oriented, towards a time when hopeful progress and an increased sense of unity will prevail.
Community
Behind the poet’s hope for the future is her respect for the community. Gorman presents the entire country of the United States as an intimate community with shared joys and struggles, choosing deliberately to ignore the divisions amongst Americans that exist in reality. The speaker introduces a focus on community in the second stanza when they list various images of community living, all of which focus on people interacting positively with others.
Stanza three elaborates on the theme of community when Gorman writes, “While we might feel small, separate, and all alone / Our people have never been more closely tethered” (Lines 9-10). The pandemic had the effect of physically distancing people from one another as lockdowns required people to stay at home instead of going to work, school and social gatherings. Gorman suggests here that, despite the physical distance caused by the pandemic, people have grown closer to one another: “Know the distance will make our hearts grow fonder / From these waves of woes our world will emerge stronger” (Lines 28-29). Only through loss are individuals able to learn what it is we value. For Gorman, the power of this new perspective gives the individuals of entire communities strength to carry on.
Grief and Gratitude
While the poem is full of contrasting ideas, the juxtaposition of grief and gratitude is the strongest. Though the poem may be about grief, it also focuses on the gratitude that can come from the experience of grief. Unlike a traditional elegy, this poem does not balance these two themes; instead, the poem uses grief as a launching point for the gratitude it wishes to express. This action starts right away when the speaker quickly moves on from their initial thought that they would wake to grief, describing instead a lovely morning that inspires gratitude and hope.
In the fourth stanza, Gorman emphasizes the theme of gratitude: “So on this meaningful morn, we mourn and we mend / Like light, we can’t be broken, even when we bend” (Lines 13-14). The comparison of people to light invites positivity, continuing the imagery introduced in the first stanza where light trounces the darkness.
The poem’s most explicit discussion of gratitude over grief appears in the seventh stanza. Gorman encourages people to see how grief “gives us our gratitude” (Line 23). In this sense, grief’s only purpose is to fuel one’s ability to move forward. We are not to fear or ignore grief, but use it for good. Such unabashed acknowledgment of grief gives humans power over tragedy, and the poet intends to bring her readers this strength with her poem.
Finally, Gorman’s reading performance of the poem reveals quick movements and energy, which might seem unexpected for an elegiac poem. Gorman’s energetic style dominates her reading of the poem, giving it the same positive energy that the words give the message. Gorman’s primary poetic domain is spoken word, and the element of performance is essential in her work, and as a modern poet who writes about social issues and who actively engages in political debate, Gorman’s performance adds to the thematic feeling she is trying to invoke through words.
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By Amanda Gorman
