A New Era

Poet Amanda Gorman on 'Full-Circle' During Inauguration - How It Connects Her to Biden

Amanda S. C. Gorman is an American poet and activist. Her work focuses on issues of oppression, feminism, race, and marginalization, as well as the African diaspora. Gorman was the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate. She published the poetry book The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough in 2015. In 2021, she delivered her poem "The Hill We Climb" at the inauguration of U.S. President Joe Biden. Her inauguration poem generated international acclaim, stimulated her two books to reach best-seller status, and earned her a professional management contract.

With more than 50 years between them and vastly different backgrounds, Amanda Gorman and new President Joe Biden may not, at first consideration, seem to have much in common. But in fact, the 22-year-old — who read her poem "The Hill We Climb" at Biden's inauguration on Wednesday — told Robin Roberts Thursday on Good Morning America that they actually have a significant connection: their speech impediments.

While "President Biden has been super open about his stutter," Gorman told Roberts, 60, that her own "speech impediment wasn't a stutter, but it was dropping several letters that I just could not say for years." "Most specifically the 'R' sound, which it would take until probably I was 20 to say — meaning that I couldn't say words like 'poetry' or even 'Gorman,' which is my last name," she continued. "I had to really work at it and practice to get to where I am today."

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Joe Biden Makes Symbolic Changes to Oval Office Reflecting Goals as President

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is an American politician who is the 46th and current president of the United States since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, Biden served as the 47th vice president during the Obama administration from 2009 to 2017. He represented Delaware in the United States Senate from 1973 to 2009.

Not long after he was inaugurated, President Donald Trump had a portrait of the populist and controversial President Andrew Jackson placed prominently in the Oval Office, looking down as he held photo ops, signed sweeping executive orders and sparred with reporters. But that painting of Jackson has been replaced. Now, next to President Joe Biden as he sits at the Resolute desk is a portrait of one of America's founders, Benjamin Franklin.

Other symbolic changes Biden has made include adding busts of labor organizer and Latino civil rights activist Cesar Chavez, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt, and former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, as well as portraits of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. It was important for President Biden to walk into an Oval that looked like America and started to show the landscape of who he is going to be as president," Ashley Williams, the deputy director of Oval Office operations, told the Washington Post.

The busts of King and Kennedy, who Biden on the campaign trail called his political heroes, are in his direct view on either side of the Oval Office fireplace.

The Chavez bust sits among photos of Biden’s family, including one of his beloved late son, Beau, on a table behind him.