Three Inaugural Poets and Their Poems, Three Decades Apart. Robert Frost (1961), Maya Angelou (1992), Amanda Gorman (2021)

Abstract

National Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman recited her inaugural poem for President Biden in January 2021, referencing Maya Angelou, who had been the inaugural poet of President Clinton three decades before, and who referenced, in turn, the first person to recite a poem at a presidential inauguration, Robert Frost, six decades ago. There are clear intertextual 
connections, which lead to a wider socio-cultural and historical  contextualization of the poems, as well as to a political interpretation of the position of the inaugural poet. This kind of reading and contextualization can be useful in the EFL classroom, as the Gen Z cohort, of which Gorman is part, seems more inclined to interact around topics of social issues and current world events, which they consider personally relevant.