Hope and Transformation in Call Us What We Carry

Introduction

Amanda Gorman’s Call Us What We Carry is a collection born of crisis—the COVID-19 pandemic, racial injustice, and a fractured national identity—yet it refuses to end in despair. Throughout the book, hope and transformation emerge not as abstract ideals but as active, demanding pursuits. The central thematic claim Gorman advances is that hope is a practiced craft, a daily discipline of choosing optimism and solidarity even when the evidence points elsewhere. This deliberate practice, she argues, fuels both personal and societal transformation, turning collective grief into a force for reckoning and renewal. The poems trace a journey from isolation and loss toward a hard-won unity, insisting that change is not merely survived but forged through intentional language, memory, and action.

Hope as a Practiced Craft

From the earliest pages, Gorman strips hope of its passive connotations. In “Every Day We Are Learning” (chapter 22), she writes:

Every day we are learning
How to live with essence, not ease.
How to move with haste, never hate.
How to leave this pain that is beyond us
Behind us.
Just like a skill or any art,
We cannot possess hope without practicing it.
It is the most fundamental craft we demand of ourselves.

Here hope is not a feeling that descends upon a person but a “craft” that must be honed. The poem situates hope within a daily routine of intentional movement—leaving pain behind, rejecting hate—that mirrors the effort of learning any skill. This reframes optimism as labor, a conscious decision made again and again.

The poem “& So” (chapter 12) reinforces the difficulty: “It is easy to harp, / Harder to hope.” Gorman acknowledges the gravitational pull of complaint and despair, contrasting it with the rigorous work of hope. The speaker, “despite being drenched with dread,” still dreams, smiling “like a sun that is never shunted.” The simile suggests that hope is a light generated from within, a resistance to external darkness. This internal act then radiates outward, because “Since the world is round, / There is no way to walk away / From each other.” Even separation becomes a form of proximity. The craft of hope, then, is inseparable from connection; practicing it inevitably draws others into its orbit.

“Practice Makes People” (chapter 61) extends this idea to collective action. The title puns on the adage “practice makes perfect,” but replaces “perfect” with “people.” Hope is the labor that forms community. The poem describes “knuckles rapping / Against the future, sounding / Out what lies beneath its hull,” framing the future not as something unveiled but as something “rendered, refined. Wrought.” Transformation, Gorman suggests, is built through repeated, embodied effort—through the pain of vaccination needles (“a pain we asked for”) and the slow “stops & starts” of recovery. The speaker insists that “fate isn’t fought / Against. It is fought for. Again / & again.” This is hope as muscle, strengthened by repetition.

Transformation Through Collective Reckoning

If hope is a daily practice, its goal is transformation—but not a transformation that bypasses suffering. Gorman locates authentic change in the wake of trauma, both personal and historical. The collection’s early “Ship’s Manifest” (chapter 2) frames the book as a “message in a bottle, a letter, and a wake—a record that is also a reckoning.” The poet becomes “the preserver of ghosts and gains,” archiving what has been lost so that it might be transformed. This archival hope sets the stage for the deep historical dives that follow.

“Cordage, or Atonement” (chapter 23) illustrates the process in mythic language. The poem meditates on the etymology of “atone”—from “at one,” meaning to reconcile, and later “to suffer the pains of whatever sacrifice is necessary to bring about a reconciliation.” Gorman applies this to a collective “we” battered by catastrophe: “Lasting meant being separate / Together, proximate in our distance.” The pandemic experience of isolation becomes a shared trial. The poem moves from despair—“It was death by survival”—to a defiant vision of unity: “What a marvelous wreck are we. / We press out of our cold / & separate crouching.” Transformation here is not a clean break but a violent rebirth. The body of the poem itself “hides a battalion,” marshaling language as a weapon. The speaker declares, “Often we cannot change / Without someone in us dying,” acknowledging that old selves must be surrendered. Yet this surrender leads to atonement: “The future isn’t attained. / It is atoned, until / It is at one with history, / Until home is more than memory.” Hope-as-craft becomes a reconciliation with the past, a deliberate weaving of wounds into a new whole.

Historical trauma becomes even more explicit in “The Truth in One Nation” (chapter 57). The poem confronts racist violence, gun culture, and the erosion of democracy. After a harrowing encounter where a Black girl is menaced by a hunter, the speaker declares, “Nothing— / & we mean nothing— / Can keep you safe. / Silence least of all.” Hope emerges not from ignoring danger but from speaking it. The poem’s later movement into national critique—“The truth is, one nation under guns. / … Scars & stripes.”—lays bare the costs of American exceptionalism. Yet Gorman refuses cynicism: “We’re optimistic, not because we have hope, / But because only by being optimistic can hope / Be ours to have.” This chiasmus captures the active, self-fulfilling nature of hope. Optimism is a strategic posture, a decision to believe in order to make belief possible. The transformation here is both personal (“We resurrect ourselves”) and national (“We believe we can transform / Without war or wariness”). The poem traces the arc from grief to gratitude to action, ending with a fragile but resolute promise: “There is still a promise here / We have promised here of all.”

Symbols of Hope and Transformation

Gorman weaves a handful of recurring symbols that crystallize the theme. Understanding these symbols deepens the analysis of how hope becomes material.

The Ark and Shipwreck

The shipwreck and ark symbolism appears most forcefully in “What We Carry” (chapter 71). The poem defines the ark as “a boat like that which preserved Noah’s family & animals from the flood,” then extends the definition: “We put words in the ark. / Where else to put them.” Language itself becomes a vessel that carries meaning through catastrophe. The poem pivots on the homophone “art” and “ark”: “Language is an ark. / Yes, / Language is an art, / An articulate artifact. / Language is a life craft. / Yes, / Language is a life raft.” Hope, as a crafted practice, depends on this life raft of language. The poem that opens the collection, “Ship’s Manifest,” likewise positions the book as a “message in a bottle,” a survival note thrown into the flood. The ark symbol suggests that transformation requires preservation—holding onto what matters while discarding what does not. Gorman’s speaker rejoices in “discarding almost everything— / Our rage, our wreckage, / Our hubris, our hate,” clearing space to “walk into tomorrow, / Carrying nothing / But the world.” Hope is not hoarding but curating, choosing what to carry forward.

Arborescent Trees

In “Arborescent III, or Elpis” (chapter 69)—Elpis being the Greek personification of hope—Gorman compares human growth to trees. The arborescent trees symbol appears: “The same as trees, / We, too, are shaped / By how we twist / Toward all that shoots / Us through with sun.” This natural image of phototropism makes hope organic and directional. Transformation is not a sudden leap but a slow bending toward light, a persistent orientation even when growth is twisted. The poem then links this to love and change: “We truly are growing / Up & out of this hurt / If we’d rather char / Than chain this love. / Our only word for this is / Change.” Hope, like a tree, finds a way to reach the sun even from the darkest soil. It is a biological imperative, not a naive wish.

The Mask

The mask functions dually as a symbol of concealment and protection, but also of collective responsibility. In the context of the pandemic, masks became visible signs of care. Gorman’s poems rarely mention masks explicitly as objects, but the motif of “face” recurs—in “Please” (chapter 3) where the reader is asked to maintain “face,” and in “The Truth in One Nation” where the speaker’s performance of innocence becomes a kind of mask. The act of unmasking—of revealing true names and true wounds—is essential to transformation. In “Call Us” (chapter 16), the speaker declares “We are not me— / We are we. / Call us / What we carry.” Identity is communal, not masked but held openly. This unmasking is a hopeful act, a trust that what is revealed can be healed.

The Lighthouse

The lighthouse appears as a beacon that guides through darkness, a counterpart to the ark. In the inaugural poem “The Hill We Climb” (chapter 72), Gorman speaks of finding “light in this never-ending shade” and becoming that light. The lighthouse is both an external signal of hope and an internal condition—“if only we’re brave enough to be it.” The speaker of “What We Carry” frames humanity as “the price of light” and closes with the preservation “Of a light so terrific.” The lighthouse, then, is not a distant monument but a role each person can inhabit, a practice of shining that aids others’ transformation.

Complexity and Contradiction

Gorman’s treatment of hope is not monolithic. She acknowledges that hope often feels unreasonable, even impossible. In “The Truth in One Nation,” the speaker admits, “Some days we believe / In nothing / But belief.” This is a paradoxical hope—belief in belief itself, a fragile scaffolding. The poem “& So” notes that the “glorious was not made to be piecemeal.” Hope demands a total commitment, a leap that can feel overwhelming. The complexity is sharpened by the acknowledgment that grief is the prerequisite: “Loss is the cost of loving,” as “What We Carry” states. Hope does not erase loss; it depends on it. The collection’s epigraph, from Anne Carson, frames history as an elegy born from survival—a questioning that leads to carrying forward. Thus hope is always tethered to mourning.

A crucial contradiction lies in the relationship between optimism and hope. Gorman writes, “We’re optimistic, not because we have hope, / But because only by being optimistic can hope / Be ours to have.” This suggests that optimism is the act, hope the result. Yet earlier poems insist hope is a craft that must be practiced. The resolution comes in recognizing that hope is both the seed and the fruit: you practice hope by acting hopefully, and that very action generates the hope you seek. The collective speaker embodies this dialectic, moving between “we” who doubt and “we” who build. The transformation is never complete; it is a continuous process of “atoning” the future with the past. Gorman resists the easy closure of triumph, instead offering “a prayer, / A people, / A peace, / A promise”—verbs masquerading as nouns, ongoing actions.

Conclusion: Carrying the World Forward

The title poem “What We Carry” distills the entire thematic arc. It begins with childhood wonder at dirt—“Even grime is a gift, / Even what is mired is miraculous”—and moves to the ark of language, to the pairing of past and present, and finally to a triumphant minimalism: “We walk into tomorrow, / Carrying nothing / But the world.” The poem enacts the discarding of all that hinders—rage, wreckage, hate—so that what remains is essential. Hope here is not about acquiring more but about trusting what has been preserved. The transformation is a return to a primal, open-handed trust: “We are enough, / Armed only / With our hands, / Open but unemptied.” The final image echoes the trees of “Arborescent III,” hands open like a blooming thing, reaching toward the future.

Gorman’s achievement is to make hope feel earned. By grounding it in the daily disciplines of language, memory, and communal care, she offers a blueprint for surviving and transforming disaster. The collection’s many historical voices—figures like Ida B. Wells-Barnett and the Donohue family—ground this hope in real struggle. Hope, Gorman insists, is not the absence of pain but the craft we build from it, an ark sturdy enough to carry us all.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does Gorman redefine hope in Call Us What We Carry, and why is this redefinition significant for the collection’s themes?

Gorman redefines hope as a “craft” that must be practiced daily, not a passive feeling. In “Every Day We Are Learning,” she explicitly states, “We cannot possess hope without practicing it.” This is significant because the collection confronts overwhelming grief—pandemic deaths, racial violence, political division—that would make passive hope feel hollow. By making hope an active discipline, Gorman empowers both the speaker and the reader to find agency in despair. Hope becomes something you do, not something you wait for, which ties directly to the theme of transformation: change is not a gift but a construction built through repeated, intentional acts.

2. Discuss the role of language as an “ark” in “What We Carry” and how it connects to the broader theme of transformation.

In “What We Carry,” language is compared to Noah’s ark—a vessel that preserves life through flood. Gorman writes, “Language is an ark. / Yes, / Language is an art, / An articulate artifact. / Language is a life craft. / Yes, / Language is a life raft.” This chain of associations links language to survival, creativity, and rescue. Transformation, for Gorman, happens through articulation: by putting words to experience, we save it from erasure and shape it into something that can carry us forward. The ark symbol also implies a collective project; just as Noah gathered pairs of animals, Gorman’s poems gather paired images, histories, and voices, creating a floating community that can weather catastrophe.

3. In “The Truth in One Nation,” Gorman writes, “We’re optimistic, not because we have hope, / But because only by being optimistic can hope / Be ours to have.” Explain this paradox and its relationship to the theme of hope as practice.

The paradox lies in the causal reversal: optimism is usually considered a result of hope, but here optimism generates hope. This aligns perfectly with the theme of hope as practice. To be optimistic—to act as if a better future is possible—is to engage in the craft of hope before any evidence of that hope exists. It is a strategic choice, like a general who fights even when unsure of victory. The act of optimism makes hope possible by creating the conditions—solidarity, resilience, visible effort—in which hope can take root. Gorman thus solves the chicken-and-egg problem of hope in dark times: you don’t wait to feel hopeful; you behave hopefully, and the feeling follows.

4. Analyze how the symbol of arborescent trees in “Arborescent III, or Elpis” develops the idea of transformation as a natural, yet intentional, process.

Trees grow by twisting toward light—a process called phototropism. Gorman uses this to argue that humans, like trees, are shaped by what they reach for: “We, too, are shaped / By how we twist / Toward all that shoots / Us through with sun.” This naturalizes transformation, making it not a violent rupture but an organic, inevitable growth if we orient ourselves toward light. At the same time, the twisting implies effort and direction; the tree does not passively receive sun but actively bends. The poem then links this to a choice: “If we’d rather char / Than chain this love.” Transformation may be natural, but it requires a deliberate turn toward love and away from destruction. Hope here is the sunward twist.

5. What role does grief play in Gorman’s vision of transformation, and why is it essential rather than an obstacle?

Grief is the foundation upon which Gorman builds hope. In “What We Carry,” she writes, “Loss is the cost of loving, / A debt more than worth every pulse & pull.” Transformation cannot happen without first acknowledging what has been lost; otherwise, change is mere denial. The epigraph frames the book as an elegy born from the survivor’s need to question and carry. In “Cordage,” grief becomes the “sacrifice” through which atonement—reconciliation—occurs. By insisting that “grief depends on love” (“The Truth in One Nation”), Gorman positions mourning as the evidence of care, and that care becomes the engine of transformation. Only by grieving fully can the community decide what to carry forward and what to discard, shaping a future that honors loss without being trapped by it.