Editor's Note: La Bloga welcomes Dr. Thelma T. Reyna to our pages as alternating Friday columnist with Melinda Palacio. Thelma is Poet Laureate Emerita of Altadena California and publisher of Golden Foothills Press. Welcome Thelma Reyna!
U.S. Presidents and Poets: Making History Together on the World’s Center Stage
By Thelma T. Reyna
RICHARD BLANCO: LATINO POET, FRONT & CENTER
The U.S. is one of the few nations on earth with a tradition of celebrating presidential inaugurations with a ceremonial twist: having a handpicked “Presidential Inaugural Poet” write and orate an inspiring, unifying poem about America, its people, and our dreams. It is not a Constitutional requirement, but the blending of poetry with a leader’s spirited, hopeful new beginnings seems natural for our new visions. For the poets themselves, serving as a President’s Inaugural Poet, is also basically an ambassadorship of bringing poetry to the people, and thus enhances each poet’s visibility and renown.
Inaugural Poets are a rather new breed, and though the U.S. is the most prominent country naming them, only four Presidents in our history have bestowed this honor, as follows:
--John F. Kennedy (1961): chose Robert Frost.
--Bill Clinton (1993): Maya Angelou in his first term, Miller Williams in his second.
--Barack Obama (2009): Elizabeth Alexander; Richard Blanco.
--Joe Biden (2021): Amanda Gorman.
Thus our Presidents set these poets on the world stage, at their swearing-in podium, and swung the spotlight of acclaim on them, helping them make history, as they themselves were doing. Particularly historic among them was Richard Blanco, whom Obama chose, and whose fame and career ascended admirably, and justly, from his honor first of all; thence to his stalwart advocacy of poetry in our lives, along with his recognition as a gifted, culturally diverse American poet.
How Richard Blanco Helped Obama Elevate Poetry for the People
Richard Blanco is a veritable melting pot of pluralism. He was born in Cuba to Cuban parents; taken to Madrid, Spain by his self-exiled parents in a short-lived bid for a better life but faced extreme poverty; then was brought to the United States to Florida where his parents and extended family settled. An excellent student, he fell in love with the beauty and depth of words early, went on to become a successful engineer, and decided to pursue poetry seriously. At the time of his selection as the first Latino Inaugural Poet, Blanco was also the youngest one to be named an Inaugural Poet, an immigrant, and openly gay.
Blanco’s books include Poetry: City of a Hundred Fires; Directions to the Beach of the Dead; Looking for the Gulf Motel; How to Love a Country.
Nonfiction: For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey; The Prince of Los Cocuyos.
Richard Blanco is author of five collections of poetry and of a hybrid autobiographical/poetic book, For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey, which contains his full Inaugural poem. “One Today” is a richly detailed paean to American diversity, spirit, and individualism. It follows below. La Bloga is proud to feature Richard Blanco, one of America’s most vaunted poets today, in our debut post.
by Richard Blanco
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.
My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—
to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.
All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.
One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.
The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.
or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello / shalom,
buon giorno / howdy / namaste / or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me—in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars
hope—a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it—together.
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