Call Us What We Carry: List 2

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 "Earth Eyes"–"Memoria."

Here are links to our lists for the book: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4
35 words 138 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. lucent
    softly bright or radiant
    The crescent moon,
    The night’s lucent lesion.
  2. lesion
    any localized abnormal structural change in a bodily part
    The crescent moon,
    The night’s lucent lesion.
  3. requiem
    a song or hymn of mourning as a memorial to a dead person
    Our remnants are revelation,
    Our requiem as raptus.
  4. breach
    make an opening or gap in
    That is, we, too,
    Are this bodied unit of flare,
    The gap for lux to breach.
  5. aground
    with the bottom lodged on land
    To put it plain / we have shipwrecked the earth / soiled the soil / & run the ground aground.
  6. reparation
    the act of putting something in working order again
    Reparation lies not in the land we own, but the very land we owe, the soil & toil we thieved in from the start.
  7. toil
    productive work, especially physical work done for wages
    Reparation lies not in the land we own, but the very land we owe, the soil & toil we thieved in from the start.
  8. earnest
    characterized by a firm, sincere belief in one's opinions
    Earnest for the first time, we must earn this turned Earth back.
  9. incessant
    uninterrupted in time and indefinitely long continuing
    [Animals in captivity will demonstrate what is termed stereotypic behavior: repetitive & unvarying actions that have neither goal nor function. Some examples of stereotypic behavior include incessant pacing, overgrooming, rocking, kicking, excessive sleeping & self-mutilation.]
  10. incensed
    angered at something unjust or wrong
    We stalked ourselves for days in our own house,
    Absolutely abulic, incessantly incensed.
  11. exacerbate
    make worse
    Smaller cages can exacerbate stereotypies.
  12. trope
    a common or clichéd plot device, idea, or theme in a creative work
    To be captive, then, is to be rendered a trope of oneself.
  13. liable
    held legally responsible
    To love is to be liable
    To ourselves & each other.
  14. ether
    a medium that was once thought to fill all space
    Perhaps there’s a day with no tattered terrain
    Of terror, only an ether strung into
    Blue.
  15. nostalgia
    a longing for something past
    In ancient Greece, the Muses, the dainty-footed daughters of Memory, were thought to inspire artists. It isn’t knowing, but remembering, that makes us create. This would explain why so much great art arises from trauma, nostalgia, or testimony.
  16. transcend
    go beyond the scope or limits of
    The poet transcends “telling” or “performing” a story & instead remembers it, touches, tastes, traps its vastness.
  17. posit
    put forward, as an idea
    Marianne Hirsch posits that the children of Holocaust survivors grow up with memories of their parents' trauma; that is to say, they can remember ordeals that they did not experience personally.
  18. ordeal
    a severe or trying experience
    Marianne Hirsch posits that the children of Holocaust survivors grow up with memories of their parents' trauma; that is to say, they can remember ordeals that they did not experience personally.
  19. determinate
    supplying or being a final or conclusive settlement
    It is how we understand a current reality as a collective memory, even as said reality continues to unfold. The recollections do not belong to a single person, nor do they have a determinate chronological end.
  20. raze
    tear down so as to make flat with the ground
    Empires have been raised & razed on much less.
  21. wraith
    a ghostly figure, especially one seen shortly before death
    We rouse ghosts,
    Primarily, for answers.
    Meaning we seek
    Ghosts for their memory
    & fear them for it just the same.
    Our country, a land of shades.
    Yet there are no wraiths but us.
  22. fleeting
    lasting for a markedly brief time
    In this one life, we, like our joy, are fleeting but certain, abstract & absolute, ghosts who glow & glow.
  23. abstract
    not representing or imitating external reality
    In this one life, we, like our joy, are fleeting but certain, abstract & absolute, ghosts who glow & glow.
  24. dub
    give a nickname to
    What Germans dubbed the Russian Pest, the Russians called the Chinese flu.
  25. preempt
    keep from happening or arising
    Something in us repents every time a new friend doesn’t tell us their given name, preempting our tongue to lay a violence toward that too.
  26. discord
    strife resulting from a lack of agreement
    This discord is so ancient it makes fossils of us all, a history no longer entirely our own & yet only ours, never understood.
  27. resonance
    the ability to create understanding or an emotional response
    The verb valer means “to cost, to be worth,” much like the English word value, yet in Spain vale thrives under a different resonance.
  28. oppression
    the act of subjugating by cruelty
    When the 1918 flu epidemic reached Chicago, John Dill Robertson, the city’s commissioner of public health, blamed the African Americans who had fled the South’s Jim Crow oppression for Northern cities.
  29. slur
    a negative or offensive remark about someone
    A racial insult renders us a mammal, albeit less free.

    In short, a slur is a sound that beasts us.
  30. bubonic
    relating to inflamed or swollen lymph nodes
    In 1900 Surgeon General Walter Wyman described the bubonic plague as an “Oriental disease, peculiar to rice eaters.”
  31. forsake
    turn away from; give up
    Our country, which we do not forsake for being un-great, that we should find by being good.
  32. valor
    courage when facing danger
    In Spanish, the word for value is the same as for bravery: valor. Courage must cost us something, or else it is worth nothing at all.
  33. yoke
    become joined or linked together
    We yoke any warmth for all it’s worth.
  34. akin
    similar in quality or character
    The closest we get to time travel
    Is our fears softening,

    Our hurts unclenching,
    As we become more akin

    To kin, as we return
    To who we were
  35. hinder
    prevent the progress or accomplishment of
    Before we actually were
    Anything or anyone—

    That is, when we were born unhating
    & unhindered, howling wetly
Created on Mon Mar 14 17:35:12 EDT 2022 (updated Fri Apr 08 17:55:33 EDT 2022)

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