Call Us What We Carry: List 1

by Amanda Gorman
This collection of poetry reflects on more than a century's worth of American history, exploring a variety of topics including racism, the 1918 influenza pandemic, climate change, and the AIDS epidemic.

This list covers "Requiem"–"What a Piece of Wreck Is Man."

Here are links to our lists for the book: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4
40 words 686 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. stilted
    stiff and strained; lacking natural ease
    Our sentences were stilted
    & stalled as a telegram.
  2. unprecedented
    novel; having no earlier occurrence
    Hope we are doing well/
    As we can be/
    In all these times/
    Unprecedented & unpresidented.
  3. rhetoric
    using language effectively to please or persuade
    We want to find who made us
    A slaughterhouse,
    A rhetoric that works in red.
  4. proximate
    very close in space or time
    Every cough seemed catastrophe,
    Every proximate person a potential peril.
  5. leviathan
    monstrous sea creature symbolizing evil in the Old Testament
    We awaited horrors,
    Building up leviathans before they arose.
  6. raucous
    disturbing the public peace; loud and rough
    We could not pull our heads
    From the raucous deep.
  7. poised
    marked by balance or equilibrium and readiness for action
    Anxiety is a living body,
    Poised beside us like a shadow.
  8. rampant
    occurring or increasing in an unrestrained way
    We recognized that something ran
    Rampant as a rumor
    Among our ranks.
  9. warble
    sing or play with trills
    Even faceless, a smile can still
    Scale up our cheeks,
    Bone by bone,
    Our eyes crinkling
    Delicately as rice paper
    At some equally fragile beauty—
    The warbling blues of a dog,
    A squirrel venturing close,
    The lilt of a beloved's joke.
  10. lilt
    a jaunty rhythm in music or speech
    Even faceless, a smile can still
    Scale up our cheeks,
    Bone by bone,
    Our eyes crinkling
    Delicately as rice paper
    At some equally fragile beauty—
    The warbling blues of a dog,
    A squirrel venturing close,
    The lilt of a beloved's joke.
  11. render
    cause to become
    □ We strove to be new-muscled & green,
    □ To exercise,
    □ To express,
    □ To stay home,
    □ To stay sane,
    □ To render our ovens beating with breads,
    □ Our phones shining with excuses for parties.
  12. fluctuate
    move or sway in a rising and falling or wavelike pattern
    Our faces fluctuating, warped like an acre passing
    Seasons.
  13. threshold
    the starting point for a new state or experience
    The gone were/are no threshold,
    No stepstone beneath our feet.
  14. ravenous
    extremely hungry
    The deepest despair is ravenous,
    It takes & takes & takes,
    A stomach never satisfied.
  15. promontory
    a natural elevation
    Watch us move above the fog
    Like a promontory at dusk.
  16. piecemeal
    one thing at a time
    This truth, like the white-blown sky,
    Can only be felt in its entirety or not at all.
    The glorious was not made to be piecemeal.
  17. meek
    evidencing little spirit or courage
    There is no meek way to mend.
    You must ruin us carefully.
  18. marred
    blemished by injury or rough wear
    We were mar, marred & moaning, thick sea.
  19. haggard
    showing the wearing effects of overwork or care or suffering
    Haggard. Hobbled. Heart-strung.
  20. colloquial
    characteristic of informal spoken language or conversation
    To ship, in colloquial terms, means to imagine or place as a pair, to push two persons or things together, whereby we ship them.
  21. culmination
    a final climactic stage
    Sometimes the extract is not an erasure,
    But an expansion.
    It is not a cut, but a culmination.
  22. forgo
    do without or cease to hold or adhere to
    We, like the water, forget nothing,
    Forgo everything.
  23. moor
    secure in or as if in a berth or dock
    That is to say, words
    Are how we are moored & unmarred.
  24. listless
    lacking zest or vivacity
    The hours roved listless as a bike
    Drunk without its handles.
  25. incantation
    a ritual reciting of words believed to have a magical effect
    Until.
    When.
    Back to normal,
    We repeat, an incantation
    To summon the Before.
  26. revere
    regard with feelings of respect
    We revere the regular more
    Than we remember it honestly.
  27. elegy
    a mournful poem; a lament for the dead
    We have no word
    For becoming a ghost or a memory.
    To be a member of this place
    Is to remember its place,
    Its longitude of longing.
    This elegy, naturally, is insufficient.
  28. fathom
    come to understand
    We cannot fathom all these phantoms.
  29. delicacy
    lightness in movement or manner
    Where we can we shall hope.
    We found it in a million delicacies
    Of enormity—
    An infant’s full-chested chortle,
    July glassing our skin,
    Music blurring a summered street.
  30. waver
    pause or hold back in uncertainty or unwillingness
    The moments wavered unscheduled,
    Planless, not plotless.
  31. solemn
    dignified and somber in manner or character
    Whole months swept by, fast but dragging,
    Like a damp void trapped in the rearview.
    Our souls, solitary & solemn.
  32. assimilate
    take up mentally
    The heart, chambered by grief.
    The mind, assimilated to suffering.
  33. unfettered
    not bound or restrained, as by shackles and chains
    We watch a toddler
    Freewheel through warm grass,
    Not fleeing, just running, the way rivers do,
    For it is in their unfettered nature.
  34. livid
    furiously angry
    The blood jaggedly striking in our veins
    Reminding ourselves we are perishable
    But prevailing, living & livid.
  35. maw
    the mouth, jaws, or throat
    Our whole year swallowed,
    As if by a massive maw.
  36. atone
    make amends for
    The word atone comes
    From the Middle English meshing
    Of at & on(e), literally “at one,” “in harmony.”
  37. harrow
    cause to feel distress
    There swims our one hope,
    Unintelligible in its massiveness,
    Like a finback dragging itself under.
    & harrowed as we are,
    We're still standing
    Gold as a beach,
    Despite all augury, proof
    That the meek shall repaireth the earth.
  38. augury
    an event indicating important things to come
    There swims our one hope,
    Unintelligible in its massiveness,
    Like a finback dragging itself under.
    & harrowed as we are,
    We're still standing
    Gold as a beach,
    Despite all augury, proof
    That the meek shall repaireth the earth.
  39. devout
    deeply religious
    Unity is its own devout work,
    The word we work in,
    That leaves us devastated to be delivered.
  40. undiminished
    not lessened
    We were reaching & wretched
    Upon this mortal soil
    & even so we are undiminished.
Created on Mon Mar 14 17:33:55 EDT 2022 (updated Fri Apr 08 17:55:01 EDT 2022)

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