In This Place (An American Lyric)

In the fifth stanza, Gorman mentions “the great sleeping giant / of Lake Michigan” (Lines 26-27), a personification of a geologic feature of the landscape that is “defiantly raising / its big blue head” (Lines 27-28). This symbol can refer to America as a whole, with its colonial origins and slow response to social justice issues; in this reading, the giant’s sleep echoes our lack of attention to climate change. However, the giant is an incredibly powerful being with the potential to be defiant against the norm and take a valuable stand, as demonstrated by many of the protest events in her poem. This landmark is “blazed into frozen soil” (Line 29), suggesting a long history of remaining inactive. Yet it is also “strutting upward and aglow” (Line 30), which implies hope and action for the giant, a thing that can both frighten and be friendly under varying circumstances.

The poem praises the genre of poetry, which it upholds as a method of resistance and empowerment: “Tyrants fear the poet” (Line 67) because poets are truth-tellers, because they can inflame and animate a crowd of listeners, and because their words reveal the deeper connections between disparate world events.