EDITOR'S Note

F YOU WERE EMBOLDENED BY WITNESSING THE POWER of words reaffirmed on the world stage in January—thanks to a stunning recitation of “The Hill We Climb” by inaugural poet Amanda Gorman—it was likely not because you had forgotten the simple truth that , but rather because you never forgot. Not once during the past four years, certainly not if you were paying attention, perhaps against your better instincts, to the way words were regularly violated, misappropriated, and exploited by the man ceremoniously fired in November. “To me words matter,” Gorman said in an interview on inauguration night. “What I wanted to do is to kind of reclaim poetry as that site in which we can repurify and resanctify—not only the Capitol building that we saw violated, but the power of words, and to invest that in the highest office of the land.” The power of that word: —to provide or endow someone or something with (a particular quality or attribute). The image of a young poet investing, endowing the presidency with the power of words once again—what a gift.