New Under the Sun

     Even though it took place in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, the Super Bowl just past was extremely precedented, since Tom Brady won the big prize for the seventh time. Completely unprecedented? This Super Bowl Sunday featured a poem. 

     Apparently the NFL saw Amanda Gorman recite her verse at the presidential inauguration and thought "We could use some of that." They did not ask her to write about football (thank goodness) but to praise three citizens doing brave work during the pandemic. Gorman delivered with "Chorus of the Captains." 

      Who could have predicted that one of the first newly-minted celebrities of 2021 would be a poet barely old enough to legally order whiskey? Young, black, and stylish enough to snag a modeling contract, Amanda Gorman is a new sort of public poet, the kind who will deploy her voice for the Library of Congress, Nike, the president, or a sports league. She's not trapped in the academy. America's most famous versifier has a killer Instagram and wants to be president.