"One Today" The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood How to Love a Country For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet's Journey Until We Could Film Looking for the Gulf Motel Directions to the Beach of the Dead City of a Hundred Fires Nowhere but Here Boston Strong: The Poem
Richard Blanco (born February 15, 1968) is an Americanpoet, public speaker, author, playwright, and civil engineer. He is the fifth poet to read at a United States presidential inauguration, having read the poem "One Today" for Barack Obama'ssecond inauguration. He is the first immigrant, the first Latino, the first openly gay person and at the time the youngest person to be the U.S. inaugural poet.[1] In 2023, Blanco was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Blanco's books include Homeland of My Body: New and Selected Poems, How to Love a Country; City of a Hundred Fires, which received the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press; Directions to The Beach of the Dead, recipient of the Beyond Margins Award from the PEN American Center; and Looking for The Gulf Motel, recipient of the Paterson Poetry Prize and the Thom Gunn Award. He has also authored the memoirs For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet's Journey and The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood, winner of the Lambda Literary Prize.
In addition, Blanco has collaborated with Caldecott Medal renown cartoonist, author and illustrator Dav Pilkey on One Today illustrated children's book. He also partnered with photographer Jacob Hessler on the limited edition fine press poetry book Boundaries, with artist John Bailey on series of Ekphrastic paintings titled a Place of Mind, and with Ramiro A. Fernandez on the photography book Cuba ThenArchived September 18, 2021, at the Wayback Machine .
He has been a professor, having taught at Georgetown University, American University, Central Connecticut State University, Wesleyan University, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Colby College, Carlow University, and currently at Florida International University. His passion is to demystify poetry teaching to all ages including grade school to nursing homes, at diverse writers workshops (e.g. Omega Institute, Maine Media Workshops), correctional institutions, and several non-profit organizations including the Writer's Center.[2][3] He serves as the first Education Ambassador for the Academy of American Poets.[4]
Biography
Richard Blanco's mother, seven months pregnant, and the rest of the family arrived as exiles from Cuba to Madrid where he was born on February 15, 1968. Forty-five days later, the family immigrated once more to New York City. Blanco was raised and educated in Miami.[5] Blanco’s parents encouraged him to study engineering, believing that it could provide him a more stable future.[5] He conceded to their wishes and graduated from Florida International University in 1991 with a degree in civil engineering.[5] He started his career in Miami while writing poetry on the side.[5] His first book of poetry, City of 100 Fires, explores these negotiations of cultural identity as a Cuban American immigrant.
Blanco reading his poem "One Today" at the second inauguration of President Barack Obama, 2013
Between 1999 and 2001, Blanco traveled extensively through Spain, Italy, France, Guatemala, Brazil, Cuba, and New England. This wanderlust of travel exploring the meaning of home resulted in his second book of poems Directions to The Beach of the Dead.
In his third book of poetry, he explored his Cuban heritage in his early works and his role as a gay man in Cuban-American culture in Looking for the Gulf Motel (2012). He explained: "It's trying to understand how I fit between negotiating the world, between being mainstream gay and being Cuban gay."[6] In the poem "Queer Theory, According to My Grandmother," he described how his grandmother warned him as a young boy: "For God's sake, never pee sitting down... /I've seen you" and "Don't stare at The Six-Million-Dollar Man./I've seen you." and "Never dance alone in your room."[7] According to Time magazine, he "views the more conservative, hard-line exile cohort of his parents' generation... with a skeptical eye."[8]John Dolan was critical of his style, calling his work "pure identity poetics, unsullied by one single stray thought or original turn of phrase."[9] When asked in a May 7, 2012 interview with La Bloga whether he considered himself a Cuban writer or simply a writer, Blanco responded: "I am a writer who happens to be Cuban, but I reserve the right to write about anything I want, not just my cultural identity. Aesthetically and politically, I don't exclusively align myself with any one particular group—Latino, Cuban, gay, or 'white'—but I embrace them all. Good writing is good writing. I like what I like."[10]
On January 8, 2013, he was named the inaugural poet for Barack Obama's second inauguration, the fifth person to play that role. He was the first immigrant, first Latino, and first gay person to be the inaugural poet.[11] He was also the youngest.[12]Maya Angelou said of Blanco: “He showed great courage, and it’s courage (that) is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. So I was very pleased with that".[13] He was asked to compose three poems from which inauguration officials selected the one he would read. After reading "One Today," he said to his mother: "Well, Mom, I think we're finally American."[14] The poem he presented, "One Today",[15] was called "a humble, modest poem, one presented to a national audience as a gift of comradeship, and in the context of political, pop, and media culture, a quiet assertion that poetry deserves its place in our thoughts on this one day, and every day."[16] Others called it "a rare break from the staid custom of ceremony that the rest of the afternoon brought" and assessed it as "Overall, the poem is successful, art meant to orient, to reconfirm collective identity in a time of recent tragedy. It's an optimistic, careful piece meant to encourage, a balm."[17] Blanco planned to publish all three poems he composed for the event.[14] He did so with the publication of For All of Us, One Today on November 19, 2013. The memoir chronicles his American Dream experiences creating the poems commissioned for the inaugural. It includes "One Today" along with the two other poems, "Mother Country" and "What We Know of Country," in English and Spanish.[18]
Blanco has been commissioned to write and perform numerous occasional poems for organizations and events such as the re-opening ceremony of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba ("Matters of the Sea / Cosas del mar"),[23]Freedom to Marry ("Until We Could"), the Tech Awards of Silicon Valley ("Genius of Stars and Love"), the opening of Aspen Ideas Festival ("Cloud Anthem"), Orlando Pulse Nightclub Tragedy ("One Pulse - One Poem"), International Spa Association ISPA Conference and Expo ("Ignite the Self Who Loves You Most"), University of Miami commencement ("Teach Us, Then"), the Fragrance Foundation Awards at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts ("To the Artists Invisible"), and commissioned by USA Today for National Hispanic Heritage Month ("the U.S. of us"). He collaborated with author and artist Nikki Moustaki to create a video for his poem "Election Year" that was also published in the Boston Globe two days before the 2016 election of President Donald Trump.[24]
Since 2017, Blanco has been contributor and host of the "Village Voice" radio program on WGBH (Boston).[25] Blanco has collaborated with BacardiHavana Club on the launch of their heritage campaign "Don't Tell Us We're Not Cuban", Samuel Adams Brewery on "Love Conquers All, Pride[26]" and Philadelphia Boys Choir on lyrics for Gershwin's re-imagined Cuban Overture.[27] Other collaborations include musical compositions with Grammy Award-winning jazz/classical pianist and composer Paul Sullivan,[28] prized composer Pablo Ortiz choral setting of "Leaving Limerick in the Rain" at Boston Symphony Hall for Terezin Music Foundation to honor the 70th Anniversary Liberation of Nazi concentration camps,[29][30] and several poems from his recent book How to Love a Country by minister of music and composer Tom Davis.[31] He was honored that his poem "One Today" was projected on the big screen at the U2Joshua Tree tour.[32] Most recently Blanco's poem "Looking for the Gulf Motel" was featured in PBS Poetry in America with commentary by Gloria Estefan, Jorge Moreno, America Fuentes, Genesis Berry, Vladimir Cortez, Joseph Abreu and executive producer Lisa New.[33]
In 2020, The Atlantic commissioned a poem for the coronavirus pandemic called "Say This Isn't the End."[34] Following the 2021 capital insurrection, he published in New York Times Magazine the poem "And So We All Fall Down" inspired by German artist Anselm Kiefer's installation: Steigend steigend sinke nieder (rising, rising, falling down). During a reprieve from the pandemic, Blanco was honored as commencement speaker for Colby College on May 23, 2021 (poem "Your Self in You, Again").
Blanco is currently on the faculty of Florida International University, his alma mater for both Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering (1991) and Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (1997). He was appointed as a founding member of President Obama Foundation Advisory Council and has lectured at the US National Archives Poetry of LGBTQ history for Human and Civil Rights.[35] Since 2014 he has hosted visiting writers program and retreat at Gould Academy.[36] Blanco is a member of the prestigious Macondo Writers Workshop, the workshop founded by Sandra Cisneros.[37] Recently Blanco was elected as Vice Chair of Board of Trustees at Colby College.[38] He and his partner live in Bethel, Maine.[6]
Since 2013, Blanco has frequented many events in various educational institutions.[39] In these events he speaks of his various poetry, difficulties that he has overcome as well as offering advice for young poets and other creative writers. After the COVID-19 pandemic he shifted his approach to include mostly virtual events.
Blanco's first book of poetry, City of a Hundred Fires, was published in 1998 to critical acclaim, winning the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press. The collection explored his cultural yearnings and contradictions as a Cuban-American coming of age in Miami and captured the details of his transformational first trip to Cuba, his figurative homeland.[43]
Directions to the Beach of the Dead, published in 2005, explored the familiar, unsettling journey for home and connections, and won the PEN/Beyond Margins Award.[44]
In 2012, Blanco's third book of poetry, Looking for The Gulf Motel, was published; it related Blanco's complex navigation through his cultural, sexual, and artistic identities,[45] and received the Paterson Poetry Prize, the 2012 Maine Literary Award for Poetry, and the Thom Gunn Award.[46][47]
Beacon Press published Blanco's fourth book of poetry, How to Love a Country, in March 2019.[48]
Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century. Sarabande Books. 2006. ISBN978-1-93251-129-1. poetry anthology
Michael Montlack, ed. (2009). Divining Divas: 100 Gay Men on Their Muses. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN978-0-299-23120-0., essay anthology
Barbara Hamby, David Kirby, eds. (2010). Seriously Funny: Poems about Love, Death, Religion, Art, Politics, Sex, and Everything Else. University of Georgia Press. ISBN978-0820335698
Ilan Stavans; Edna Acosta-Belén; Harold Augenbraum; María Herrera-Sobek; Rolando Hinojosa; Gustavo Pérez Firmat, eds. (2011). Norton Anthology of Latino Literature. W. W. Norton. ISBN978-0-39397-532-1., poetry anthology
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