[W T Clark]

Actually, there's quite a lot to discuss, I think.

It's interesting which poets are being celebrated. Amanda Gorman and Maya Angelou, for instance, are two black women. It's interesting which black poets the white establishment has summoned up. These poets write easily understandable, optimistic poems. Poems are empowering to black people, but never say anything too distasteful about the white establishment. Poems that are not too well-crafted, or too complex to seem like an intellectual threat to a white person. The Hill we Climb is a piece in service to Neliberal Bidenism that only brings the country back to "normality", and I don't think many black people like that "normality". Maya Angelou's poems, badly metred, though inspirational and quite pleasant, say things white people can swallow: racism is bad, slavery is a terrible legacy, but do they speak to the experience of black people in America today, an experience the white establishment might not quite like? No, not really.
Why are we putting token, famous black poets on the dolar? Where are the Jay Wrights, or the Ishion Hutchinsons, who have taken poetry and made it theirs, complex and visionary.
No, until poets like them are at our forefront, then this isn't abreaking open. It's white people trying to make themselves feel good.