Richard Blanco, who is openly gay and the son of Cuban exiles, was invited to compose an original poem to commemorate President Obama’s second inauguration. Here is video of Blanco sharing that poem, “One Today,” with the full text below:
Stories tagged with “poetry”
NEWS FLASH
Obama Names Gay Latino Poet Richard Blanco As Inaugural Poet | President Obama has named Richard Blanco to recite an original poem as the Inaugural Poet. Blanco is Latino and openly gay, living in Maine with his partner. Blanco says he feels a “spiritual connection” to Obama because of his multicultural background and the way he speaks about his family. In turn, the President believes that Blanco’s writing will “celebrate the strength of the American people and our nation’s great diversity.” Blanco is the fifth inaugural poet to compose an original poem commemorating the occasion, following in the footsteps of Robert Frost (Kennedy, 1961), Maya Angelou (Clinton, 1993), Miller Williams (Clinton, 1997), and Elizabeth Alexander (Obama, 2009).
Remembering Ray Bradbury
I am so sorry to hear of the loss of Ray Bradbury, who as well as writing some of the first, most influential science fiction I ever read, but who helped teach me how to write. Zen and the Art of Writing, his book about how he became a writer and came to understand creativity is a book I constantly go back to when I’m stuck, especially for Bradbury’s poetry. Here’s one to start with:
Not smash and grab, but rather find and keep;
Go panther-pawed where all the mined truths sleep
To detonate the hidden seeds with stealth
So in your wake a weltering of welath
Springs up unseen, ignored and left behind
As you sneak on, pretending to be blind.
On your return along the jungle path you’ve made
Find all the littered stuffs where you have strayed;
The small truths and the large have surfaced there
Where you stealth-blundered wildly unaware
Or seeming so. And so these mines were mined
In easy game of pace and pounce and find;
But mostly fluid pace, not too much pounce.
Attention must be paid, but by the ounce.
Mock caring, seem aloof, ignore each mile
And metaphors like cats behind your smile
Each one wound up to purr, each one a pride,
Each one a fine gold beast you’ve hid inside,
Now summoned forth in harvests from the brake
Turned anteloping elephants that shake
And drum and crack the mind to awe,
To behold beauty yet perceive its flaw.
Then, flaw discovered, like fair beauty’s mole,
Haste back to reckon all entire, the Whole.
This done, pretend these wits you do not keep,
Go panther-pawed where all the mined truths sleep.
Intermission
The bridge is yours.
-A great meditation on the importance of Adrienne Rich.
-Professional wrestling’s past and future.
-A bad proposal for video game labeling.
-More evidence for my fairy tale anti-heroine theory.
-The best of the Very Special Episodes:
Losing Adrienne Rich
I don’t write much about poetry here, but I wanted to acknowledge the passing of Adrienne Rich, for whom poetry was a tool in “the creation of a society without domination.” Listening to her read “Diving into the Wreck” is remarkable. And it makes it all the more painful that with her gone, we can no longer access “the wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth.” It’s harder for me to think of a better description of our broken world and the quest to bind it up again than her gorgeous quest for “the damage that was done /and the treasures that prevail.”
