This is the Poet Speaks, a show all about or tradition, hip hop and cardboard boxes on the bloc, Reget Bandolero so your heavy metal punk rock and La Junior Hyde pop. What makes poetry so amazing, so incredible is this absolute fascination and ability to change our lives, the old tradition, the reason why we speak.
This is the Poet Speaks. Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Poet Speaks Podcast. Now, our next guest is someone who's work truly bridges the personal and the political. A poet who reminds us that identity belonging in home are not fixed places, but living poems we keep rewriting. He's the fifth inaugural poet of the United States, the author of How To Love a Country in a voice that continues to define the American experience in all it's beauty,
all of it's great, great complexities. Everyone, please, welcome to the post Speaks Podcast. Richard Blanco. Richard, how are you.
Great? Thanks Amanda, It's wonderful to be here. Great intro.
Hey, no problem, no problem, It's a I feel like an intro. Just it makes you feel good, don't It makes you feel good before you get into some questions.
Right, absolutely covers.
A lot of ground.
There we go, there we go. That's what the intro is for. So tell us before we begin, I want to know where are you currently at? Where are we talking to you in the world as of right now.
I'm in Miami, Florida and the same house I grew up at my mother's house. So I'm teaching at Florida and University's a semester and I'm just serve, just living with my mom, she's eighty nine, and just serve keeping it, you know, keeping tabs on her, make sure she's okay. So that's where I am, back home my home city.
Wow, wow, Okay. Now you're a born and bred Miamiami, Miami boy, right, Miami, right.
Almost. I got here when I was four years old.
I was born in Madrid, actually, and I got to the United States when I was forty five days old, first in New York City, and then eventually we moved to Miami, which.
Was a typical sort of rout for a lot of Cuban exiles.
You know, in nineteen sixty eight in Miami, there wasn't as much opportunity as there was up in the northeast. So but yes, and you can say it's about as native as Miami.
And gets wow, amazing, amazing. Now, okay, before we get into that, I mean, we have such you have such a long breath, like you said, of your childhood growing up, you have such a long breath of so much of where you've been to get to where you are today. But you know what, I kind of want to start
off this question. I want to start off with this question because I know you have said your life's obsession has been the word home right that you were as you said, right now you're made in Cuba, assembled in Spain, imported to the US. Now, after all these years, Richard, and after I mean you've probably were in thousands upon thousands of poems. Now, I mean, what what does home even still mean to you? I mean, does it still
feel like a question? Or do you think you know you've finally found that answer within you know, your body, or even as you know your latest piece of poetry, the latest piece that you're offering the world suggests you know, what does home?
What is home even now?
For you? Yeah? Sure, great question. You know, asking what's home is like asking what is love? Really?
It's such a big word, and so it's it's changed over time. It's changed because I've changed, It's changed because circumstances have changed. Like everything in life, we grow, we mature and what not. So I'll try to be brief. But so there's been very distinct phases in each one of these are sort of marked by a book.
The very first book was really the question.
Of home more and in cultural identity, all right, being a Cuban American and and sort of that that investigation going to Cuba for the first time, understanding of the motherland, so to speak. Then after I started reading some revisionist history, I became a little bit of a sort of an America bachelor, and I just wanted to be Cuban all the way.
You know, that's my real country.
You know, I got to do whatever it takes to sort of make sure Cuba is a free and democratic country and whatnot. So that was a phase, but that was also, of course beyond my control.
So eventually I moved.
I moved from the Republic of Miami to Cartford, Connecticut, my first teaching job, which was this big you know, I was thinking New England, Okay, finally going to the real America, right, and sort of thinking about what that means. And that's that's partly my second book. And then, of course that fantasy of that real American story is exactly that. It's a romanticized version of what immigrants grow up with.
Right.
So I started traveling a lot, and then those travels.
With that same question with his home.
So I started writing a lot about more cosmopolitan sense of what my home might be. My home might be Venice, home might be London, home might be somewhere in between. And then and then I had put the question of home a little bit to rust. As the poet Bosho said, you know, life is a journey, and the journey itself is home. But then when the White House called for me to write a home, which was basically the assignment was write a poem for America, I read all those questions, Am I even an American?
What does that mean?
All those questions resurfaced, and in a way the poem is an answer to those questions and the affirmative saying no, damn it, I am part of this narrative. We are all part of this narrative. And then since then, I, like you said, the latest book has been yet the latest invasion of what my sense of home is. And I'm realizing that I've never lost home, and I've never maybe even gained one, but that home is the sum total of all one's experiences, which are beautiful in their
own way. But you know, you can't necessarily reclaim some of these spaces anymore, but they still live in you, in your body, and that's why the book is called Homeland of My Body. So I've turned from outward sort of looking inward and saying, no, all that is.
Always with me, and who knows what the next phase will be.
Yeah, when I hear that, it's kind of something that you said like kind of ripped out to me.
And I think a lot of people can.
Relate that have that immigrant child of immigrants whatever that looks like, first generation entering into this new country. You had said you had moved to what was it, Connecticut and you felt like, Okay, I'm actually part of America America? Could you expand a little bit more on what that kind of meant when you what you mean when you say that, sure, well.
I mean for anybody out there that are visiting Miami for an extended period of time, you know, Miame is kind of a cultural bubble, right, it's a very Latinized city, and so.
You sort of you sort of grow it.
You grow up sort of not feeling like the other really in some weird way, but the other nest comes like, no, I want to be that person on TV.
I want to be or to think that that is the real that the Brady.
Bunch is the real America, or that you know, all these sitcom or the foods you would see on TV that we didn't grow up with, like easy cheese. So you know, this mythology of what is the America? What is the real American? Because in a weird way it's ironic, but because you're surrounded by more or less like ninety eight percent of my class with Cuban or Latin next folks just like me.
So you know, it's human nature.
You know, you're you in a where do way you exoticize? That's the word that American as, which usually you know Latinos get exoticized themselves by other people. Right, you are stereotyped. So I had a stereotypic vision of what it meant to be America that was still with me even in my even when in during the inauguration when well, when they asked me to write the poem, there was still a part of me that, well, am I really part
of this American narrative? You know, I kind of feel like it, But am I really part of this country as not only as an immigrant, bred as a gay man as well, and so uh so, Yeah, I went up north looking for that, you know, the sleigh rides in the snow and the little white picket fence and and not to say that parts of that weren't there, right, but it's certainly I call it the exile of my exile because I felt like it was I was, I was in his country. I didn't really know at all.
I thought I would know from from again stereotypes.
But yeah, now that's fascinating. I mean, you are correct Miami versus Connecticut, I mean, like down south versus up East. I mean that's part of really that that part of the United States that's you know, very Boston. You know that kind of I don't know how to say this politically correct, but you know, maybe a bit Yankee thirteen Colonies.
You definitely definitely do have that type of vibe.
No.
I love that you said that, though, because I didn't think that's very honest. Now, before we kind of move on, I want to say this too. You know, so you were an engineer before you were even a full time poet. I mean, like, so that is such a I guess if first rip, when you first hear that, anyone's gonna just say, hey, that those are two completely one eighty different sides of the coin in terms of a career. I mean, but how do you see that? How did you?
I mean tell us, how did you even transition? Was it something just in your heart that you wanted to just become be a full time poet, full time writer words myth? Or was engineering? I mean, was that something you were passionate about? Tell us a bit about how you made that career transition.
Yeah, I mean that that's also tidy. You know, all these stories sort of intersect. And that also ties into being an immigrant by forty five days, but also growing up in an immigrant family, so of course a working class immigrant, lower working class immigrant family, so I didn't have much exposure to the arts or the humanities or
anything like that. Plus of course you know there's there's the more you know, those immigrant values or you know, you know, you're going to study something you know solid so that you can make a better living than us. You know, that kind of thing, which I think exists in other families as well, traditional, but especially it's really emphasized in an immigrant community. And then there's also a cultural divide because what little my parents knew about arts and humanities had to do with Cuba.
My parents didn't even know who Robert Frost was or the Rolling.
Stones for that matter, So so there's no sort of they couldn't even foster that even if they wanted to.
And then my grandmother was.
Was my primary caretaker, and she was very homophobic and uh and so at one time I wanted to study architecture and she thought that was too gay. So my choices and the arts that was an encourage from from from that point of view either.
But I was great at math.
I was always a left brain right brain kind of kid, one of those obnoxious kids. I got a's or a minuses and everything except physical education.
And uh so I really didn't know what exactly I say about it. I was like, why not do engineering?
And I thought the plan was to uh get my degree in engineering, specialize in structural engineering, go on, to get a master's in architecture along the way that obviously didn't happen, And it was really engineering that paved the road to poetry part in the pun. But I didn't realize half my like half my job was writing writing letters and reports and studies and proposals, which were the
lifeblood of a consulting firm. And these are just narratives, these are but also thinking about audience and tone and word choice and diction and connotations and all this stuff like really made me dive deep into language. And I always knew I wanted to do something creative, you know, I just didn't know what that would be. But that
triggered something. And what it triggered was a love for language that I realized went back to I never remember not knowing two languages since as far as I can remember, I was the first one to effectively learn English in my family, and so I remember translating for my parents when I was four or five years old, and I realized that language. I think that imprinted in me. And
you know, I didn't take language for granted. Granted was language wasn't just something you communicate with, but it was a way seeing the world.
There was power and language.
I mean, your parents are your linguistic mercy, you know, in certain situations.
And I think that was that then clicked on.
But but I really I love both, and of course, by necessity, I've been a practicing civil engineer and poet for most of my adult life.
Really the big break, the big big break was.
Of course becoming presidentiary and augroup poet, which was a game changer. But like most artists, you know, you just we have to find, you know, some other way, means.
Of a livelihood. But I loved it. I think there was there was an interesting.
Balance because when I was when I was wearing a bad poetry day, I just my design bridge. When I was saying about engineering day, I just write poetry at work all day.
And I think it was a healthy balance.
And I always tell my students in my undergraduate class, Listen, even if you don't go on to become a poet, keep some art in your life always because it professions your mind and it gives these new ideas for whatever your career might be. But but yeah, that's kind of.
What it happened.
I mean, I you said the key word was as careers, they're very different.
But also.
But on the other hand, I think, as you know, designing is a very creative endeavor.
I sometimes when I'm designing something, I feel the same sort of.
Juices flowing is when I'm designing a poem, and it's like I like, I say, I create a bridge and I design a poem. You know, it's not those two things aren't mitually exclusive. But yes, careers they're very different obviously, But but I've carried them both and proudly.
Yeah, no, I love. What I love about that too, is you know you really kind of you expressed how a lot of them. Again, people from the outside looking in without the critical thinking lens, think they're two different things. But like you said, that's the lifeblood of consulting at a firm, right, you know, writing those proposals, you know, And it's it's the same thing with you know, a lawyer in a courtroom is using poe try to present
or defend their case. Right, a doctor is you know, you're using poetry to you know, make the language translatable to their patient.
Right.
So many people just don't put that into into the world lens of so much of what we do so aligned. It doesn't have to be so different than what we're really thinking. Even as a person. Let's say you do finance, there's poetry in that, you know what I mean, trying
to explain numbers, crunching numbers, et cetera, et cetera. So I really really do love that, and it's it's this kind of metaphor, you know, again, like you said, your poems are still building those bridges, just in a in a just in a different way, maybe even in the same way.
Yeah, yeah, that's so true.
And you know, I think, you know, almost every human endeavor comes down to written and oral communication skills to be successful.
But also it's also about synthesis of.
Knowledge rather than this this sort of specialization. And unfortunately our educational system generally still silos everything, right, it gives you too much of one thing and not a golf across the board.
And this is a whole other conversation.
But that's what they're they're they're finding out with AI now that really specializing it is really not.
A good idea anymore.
You have to be a generalist to be able to really that's where the future is and where the arts and humanities are really going to matter. And but it's also a two way street. Like people don't realize how much left brain work there is in creating a poem, right, especially in the in the in the later stages.
Right.
But a lot of times when I'm writing a poem, I'm looking for some kind of internal logic, I'm looking for a pattern. I'm looking for structure. I'm looking how to break that structure. Right, And you know, at the beginning,
it's much more right. It's you know, the cigarettes of Martinez, you know, but there comes a point where you're actually you're you're you know, you're left braining the poem at some point, right, So that's also trueing The same happens when you create a bridge and you don't you don't begin a bridge with just surf, an unknown, a bunch of unknowns that you start trying to put together and
stitch together into a design. And sometimes there's many failures, right, and you got to start it over again, or you have to redirect in the middle of all that. And I think, you know, we're all, we're all, we're you know, we're we're all left brand and right brand.
I think we just don't always know that.
Yeah, no, absolutely don't.
Don't realize we're practicing it.
Already absolutely absolutely Well, moving along here just a bit now, So Richard, I mean when when just this regular guy named President Barack Obama just chose you as is a nougural poet, I mean, your words literally became part of national consciousness. I actually do remember actually seeing you. I must have been I was, I was like a kid. I remember seeing that was when he was elected all those things, So I do remember seeing that on TV just so you know. So, I mean that was part
of the national consciousness. And you at the time, I mean, you were the youngest inaugural poet, is that correct at that time? And you were the first openly gay man at that time to be the nogural poet. I mean you had a lot of first that was a really the gravity of that moment. Again, you became part of the national lexicon. I mean, what did it mean to
craft the poem that you made? One today no one would speak for a country, especially at that time, very divided, I mean, and kind of what did you want to leave? What was the mark you want to lead there? When you Well, first off, I want to say, what was that call? Like, where do you even get that call? Does someone call from a burner phone. How the heck does that even? How does someone even get we really need to know. I mean that that's the real that's
what people really want to know. How do you even get that call?
Right? Right?
There's a I will add though, I was also the first engineer, but that was yes, they didn't high that too much. Actually, I was just driving. I was driving from New York to my home in Maine, and I just get this phone call, which is weird because I have phone phobia. I rarely pick up the phone. But I was stuck in traffic, and I thought, what the hell? And I thought it was a practical joke. I didn't understand what they were saying.
Wow.
Wow, It was like and.
Because you know nobody, this isn't something you apply for, It isn't something that you're shortlisted for. Your finalist is literally out of the blue, and they have your phone number. But so the person said, finally, she said no, like Robert Frost and Maya Angelou. I'm like, oh, okay, so you can imagine.
I'm like, is this like some kind of dream? And I still didn't believe it.
So I pulled over the side of the road and I googled the person's name, and sure enough it came up said presidential inaugural committee.
Wow.
My response, my immediate response was a little surprising for me. I just felt overcome with its an incredible sense of gratitude, and not because oh I was elected, I mean chosen to be this thing, but just thinking about again, all these stories intersect, right, the choices my mother leaving Cuba pregnant with me, the choices my parents made for me, all the sacrifices, you know, the typical sort of immigrant story, their.
Belief and education.
That all this stuff was at this moment was only really possible because of all the love and guidance that they gave me, and my grandparents and my community at large and my extended family.
And so it was the sense of wow, you know, we think.
That we were writing our own story after you know, when we get in our late teens, right or maybe even earlier, don't realize that a lot of that story has already been or the foundations of that story has already been written by the people around you, people that love and nurture you. So that was a beautiful, beautiful feeling. The whole world transfixed. Then came this sheer terror of having. They asked me to write three poems and in three weeks.
So wow, which is not it is not I usually write a poem a week as a draft, but arguably not the most.
Important poem in my life.
And so the first poem was kind of a it was all right, but I think it was more of a warm up.
The second poem was one today.
And to get to that second point, Yeah, second poem, you know, like we were talking about earlier, there's something that was blocking me. It was a lot of writing poetry is right when you're not asking the questions that you're afraid to ask and you're not going there. And the question was am I even part of this country? Do I even love this country or eat enough to write a poem for? And does this country love me back?
Right?
Yeah? And again that the poem is in some ways, in many ways, is a response to that, in the affirmative that yes, we're all our narratives are it's in our motto out of the many one. So that gave me a throne to the poem is something I felt I could really believe. In a little small anecdote to my very first creative writing assignment in my very first creative writing class with my mentor was still my mentor
and now my colleague to this day. We read we read some Frost and Ginsburg and the Witman, and my assignment was write a poem about America. So in a way, that became the first poem in my first book.
In a way, I've been.
Writing that poem all my life by questioning what it means to be American and what does it mean to be Cuban, which are kind of the same question, right, What is identity?
What is country? What is home? What is belonging? What is identity?
So I called my mentors, I got the same assignment, only from the president.
Yeah, so yeah, yeah, no, that is I mean, that's amazing, and it's I wonder. I mean at the time, I mean, were you did you let the gravity of that moment sink in fully or was it you had to wait some time after, you know, maybe weeks months after to really realize the momentum, the hugeness of that moment for you.
Yeah?
I really, I really, I really didn't. Because there's just three poems in three weeks. I mean a lot of things shifted, and yeah, a lot of help and including my husband and other friends, and hiring people to just let me.
Write the poem right, to take care of the logistics and all that.
So I was just go, go, go, right. The most important to me thinking it was, of course, write the best poem you can, right. And so when it really kind of hit me was when I was waiting to be called up to the podium.
Uh, and I took. I took my mother with me. I mean I took.
I had other guests, but you can only take one person, like right next to you. So on the platform there, and it was the first time that I could actually I was you know, the poems are done, you know, I'm ready, I've here, I've had the sound check where you could finally just breathe and take.
In the moment.
It was like, oh my god, like a gay immigrant kid is going to read a poem for the whole country and it's me.
But it wasn't. It was more like it.
Was this feeling of I'm looking at my mother who grew up in a dirt floor home in Cuba.
Right.
It was this feeling of really the most beautiful things about this country.
It was this feeling of you feel a reference in that inauguration.
Yeah, it's about Obama, but really you feel like that really defines our democracy, where it's it's a sense that your service to something much bigger than yourself. And so in some ways that that kind of shifted from nervousness to sort of just the sense of.
Where the ego goes away. You know, it was just kind of like, no, this is for us.
And and I it's part of the poem already, because you know, I always say my poems are smarter than me.
They're already sort of telling me what I'm going to feel.
But you know, it's uh, I wrote, I wrote a small memoir of it, a memoir, and I call it.
It's called One Today for all of us.
Uh uh Now I can't forget One Today for all what it is once today, the inaugural Poem's journey. And I did that because I had never had this. After I'm flying home, it just now it hit me, like, what really happened?
All right? This is huge. I thought I was going.
To go home and get the nail and walk the dog, because you know, nobody reads poetry like I thought my life would just go on the way it was.
But it suddenly hit me, and it was so fast. So I get the call on.
December twelfth, the inaugurations on January twenty first. So it's the first time I wrote write a book just out of this sheer impulse to write it down, to make sure it happened, make sure it happened, and remember it because it all seems so quick and was quick. And I also thought, for God's sake, the next person that becomes a nougurl poet, you know a little bit about what to expect. So when I got a chance to when Amanda Gorman was chosen, I got a chance to speak with her.
I sent her the book.
I told her, you know, sort of shared like you know, we search compared notes about the call and all that, because I mean.
I never got to talk to my Angelou.
I talked a little bit to Elizabeth Alexander, which is my predecessor. And now there's only there's only three of us alive. And like my husband says, more people have been to the Moon than I've been President's or nougurl poets.
It's so it's a feeling that you can't just sort of call a friend and say, like, hey, last time you read it, but anyway, but yeah, that's when it really was like, you know, okay, something shifted, right, and yeah, and I just wanted to record that with the written word, which is what I do.
Tell me a bit about too. You know, again, we think of that day and you know, obviously, like you talked about, it's such a select club of people and such amazing people that have been able to do it. Tell me you had mentioned earlier you had given kind of segue to this next question. You said, basically, I mean it was a game changer for you in terms of your writing career. I mean for those that are listening. You know a lot of people they you know, they
may not see poetry as viable career wise. Tell us, I mean we you know, just out of my own curiosity too, tell us what kind of the roller coaster were you able to go on in terms of your career in poetry after having such a big honor like that. What did that look like that you'd be willing to share?
Yeah?
Sure, so you know it's it's arguably, right, the most public moment for poetry in the entire country, right, you know, sixty million people here at one poem at the same time, and it triggers, Uh, it triggers a lot of things for people. So so what happened a few things that were you know, things that I never knew were possible, right, you know, And I think a lot of a lot of this might happen if you want a pulitzer or something like that, right, And a lot of our careers as poets is you.
Know, hanging in there and having faith.
That's something beautiful and big will happened at my shift, does or not?
Like that's fine too, Like I wasn't. I was.
I was a point of my career where I was fine where I was. Of course I was dreaming for more. But anyway, so first of all, agents called from all over the place. That was nuts, like suddenly because I had a memoir. I had a drafted memoir about about my childhood, about growing up in Miami. So so that was like what like interviewing, interviewing, interviewing agents on the phone.
As soon as I got back off the stage and.
Back into the Senator's office, they were ready, people calling my speaker's agent to book me. So it was like what I thought, I was going to walk the dog and get the mail and go back to my engineering day job right now. So yeah, all sorts of which, again, these stories aligned for me because it was not the
usual suspects. It was people I've read for the USDA, the fdi C, all sorts of immigrant advocacy groups, all sorts of LGBT groups, all sorts of nonprofits, all sorts of I've done corporate events.
And for me, again being that kid that.
Didn't have access to the arts, right, for me, that democratization.
Of poetry, it was so inviting.
Right, It's kind of like I always thought of myself wanting to be a poet of the people, and that almost sounds a little pretentious, but what I mean by that is, you know, I always thought we should put poetry out there and not wait for people to come to poetry kind of the work you do, right, Like, it's like, let's put it out there, let's not wait
for people to come. And so that idea of being almost like a poet to your evangelist, right, of being able to walk into rooms where people have never even seen or heard a living poet and be that.
Person was really special.
And so but yeah, I spent about ten years of my life just being on the road about seventy percent of my time, which I never knew that was possible as a career. But I fully embraced it because I felt like I was doing something good, something good, not for poetry itself, right, and for people themselves, not just because it's my career.
But yeah, it was. You know, there's a lot.
Of venues, you know, these places call you you don't call them, right that I never knew anything about. So so it was like living the dream in a way, right, like just making the flip side to that is that kind of that kind of exposure.
I'm in some ways more afraid to publish now than before, right because you're you're out there right, like there's.
A lot of eyes on you, so uh so in a way that so oh yeah, so that's it kind of ironic, but uh you know, are people just saying yes or do I have just yes? People that are accepting poems, but they're not really up to part way where it should be.
And then the other great thing that started happening.
People started actually me to write more occasional commissioned poems and commemorative poems, like a poems for Boston Strong at the benefit concert.
So that was another way.
Of writing that I never knew, like literally, like they're like assignments. Yeah, it's And so having the practice of what I learned from writing an occasional poem the one today really worked and helped to understand what that really means and how does.
That work and how do you do that? And why would you do that? Right?
So that was another, you know, another another sort of another door that opened, and another way of sort not only uh, another way of not only putting poetry out there, but also of writing poetry myself.
Another source of kind of inspiration.
Absolutely and in that same spirit, I mean, you became Miami Dade's first poet laurette and the Academy of American Poets Education Ambassador. So I mean your Miami Dade County, I mean, like you said, that is a bastion of culture diversity, and you know, they never had a poet lorette before. And you tell us about kind of how I mean, you know, and you you strike me as
a type of person. I mean you just take the opportunities, you know, you you almost you create the opportunities really for yourself that I really do feel like you strike as that type of person. You do want to strike the iron, Like you said, you want to be a poet of the people. You know, tell us how did you come about being Miami Dades first poet Lourette? Was
that something you just kind of came in conjunction. They called you, you called them, or you saw you saw space and you said you want to enter that space.
A little both.
So, uh, Miami Dad County actually had a poetry ambassador, a role which is the mayor loves poetry and she's uh, I mean she's a big fan of poetry. And so so this person, uh works it's part of the cultural when I forget the exact department, but cultural affairs or something like that.
But they have a.
Poet that a poetry ambassador, and then someone who's also a writer obviously, and and.
We we were calling.
She was talking to me one day about like the possibility of creating the first you know, poet laureateship and said, that's a great idea.
And she asked me for people, and I said, well, I have a bunch, but I will do it if you want. Why not, right.
Again, if it's in line with my with my you know, sort of my my mission, and it's not not my brand, but again putting poetry out there, and so the ability anywhere I can, I can be that person, that ambassador, that that that that person that brings people poetry, that uh that gets to sort of be the messenger of having people changed by poetry. So I welcomed that and we did. My big project was was something modeled after
Robert Pinsky's project. It was called My Favorite Poem Project, and so we just went around the whole country doing different sorry the whole county during different events, but just choosing people from firemen to like county commissioners to poets, to artists, to politicians to teachers, and just asking them to share their favorite poem and the story behind it and how it changed their life, and with these wonderful conversations, right like.
So, so that was great, Uh.
With the with the Academy of American Poets, that's also sort of an same thing.
Once I saw the incredible reaction to.
That one poem right read, and I thought, what if you know, I just thought, you know, how many kids they're out there, how many people there are out there that in our educational system really thinking about how they.
Don't get to that exposure to poetry. So I thought, I got to change that, or I want to change I want to help change that.
I want a little boy like me to know about poetry earlier in life and the arts in general.
And so I got to talking to the Academy American.
Poets who serve Who's a big part of who they serve, our educators, And I thought, well, I can't do.
This single handedly.
But if we team up with educators and give them a leg up right and thinking about giving them resources and tools to teach poetry and interesting and innovative ways, then the numbers, you know, are exponential. You know how many hundreds thousands of students run across their classrooms in their life time.
And so that's my role there, And that was sort of self created too, because I just.
Again I wanted to I wanted to poetry, poetry for the people, by the people of the people, so to speak.
Yeah. Absolutely, and I really again i'd love that. And I really do commend you for again really putting poetry in a place, especially with your platform that's so kind of touchable, it's so reachable. It's very commendable for you to be doing that, especially in a place where like where you're living Miami, Dad. So I want to move on a bit here now. In How to Love a Country, First off, that title is already an interesting and interesting title, and I would love to kind of find out more
about how that that title even came about. But in How to Love a Country, you write of America's I would say, almost painful and beautiful contradictions, right, beauty and its brokenness.
Right.
I mean at this point, you know, looking at the world we live in today, Richard, I mean, do you believe poetry can still heal a nation? Or are we at a different phase in life now? What are your thoughts?
Yeah? Sure?
So that book was an outgrowth of, again, the same question of home, right, but not just what home means to me, but what is the larger question of home means to us? So a lot of that poetry is more the poetry of weed than the poetry of me. Again, but with the same question, because you know, traveling around and or just the response of tens of thousands of emails of people saying they finally felt like part of America.
Anyway, but again being on the road, right, what can a poem do in the world? Right?
How can a poem participate in some kind of civic discord. What does a poem do? And so that book was really different for me in that sense, I dare to sort of step way outside my comfort zone in terms of just my sort more autobiographical foundations.
Right so, so U.
So that I wanted, I wanted us all to look at that.
That, like you said, was where do you use that? Something? Horrible beauty? What was the I mean beauty and it's beauty.
Painful contradiction, but a beautiful one.
Yeah, and uh and I think that you know, you could almost put a question mark behind that title.
It's like, how how do you how to love a country? Question mark? What does that even mean? What? How do we love it?
I think that that broken beauty comes from two things. One is, as I like to say, my my parents are more American than I could ever be, or more patriotic at least, and because of the leap of faith and the sacrifices they made, the quintessential belief in the American American dream and the values, uh, the traditional values and the whole you know, the whole.
Promises of this country which we take for granted.
Right So, but they've always instilled in me a sense of optimism that no matter how bad things are, there's always something good to look at, right, and also their own countries, right, but that yeah, there's a lot of broken stuff that we also have to look up.
But I think, you know, to say that I know where and where we are now that book was.
Published in before the twenty sixteen election, and that we were already a bit broken, right yeah, And like you say, where we are now is like, so that's the question, and it's social sort of maybe what I'm going to be writing around around next You know, I don't to be honest with you, and I don't I don't like saying that you know that anything really changes the world per se like boom like. But what I always do believe is that you know, art, a poem can change
a person, and a person can change the world. And what's weird what we do is artists, right, It's like we never see the ripple effects of what we do. You know, who knows if little Barack Obama read up Home by Maya Angelou or you know, by Gwendolen Broke and said I'm going to change the world. We do what we do, right, but we we we also do
it in a in a in acquired way. So I think I think that is the role of poetry, at least that's what I wanted to do in that book, you know, because as artist, as poets, we're asking questions hopefully that aren't being asked.
We're not just stating the obvious. Sometimes we need to state the obvious.
But it's also art should give us a way out or or some some way, not a way out, but another.
Possibility right that we be looking at.
I think art also humanizes these issues that get abstracted by the news and by social media.
Right when you when when you when you write.
Poetry of witness, when you create, when you write a poem about a real person, there's a real faith, there's real names, there's real tears, there's real.
Smiles, there's real all that, right, it becomes a real thing. So so I don't quite no.
I think I've been talking to a lot of my friends, as I'm sure you have to, and and we're we're we're like, what is the role of poetry right now?
What can we do?
And part of what we're feeling too is that right now, joy and beauty are radical as well, and that can also change things, right if we can start looking at the beauty, and by that I don't necessarily mean oh, a rose or something like that.
But again, what are we not looking at? Where is there.
Something that can help help these help these divide I wouldn't say heal these divides, but let's get people talking in some ways. And again it's quiet work, right, but there's a lot of us. But I think it's really interesting the.
Role of poetry becomes more and more important.
And you've seen that in our country as things become more politically complex, as they are in Latin American countries and in oppressed countries right where the poets and it's not even that they're writing political poems, it's just the fact that they dare to hope and dream, they dare to say something that.
Nobody is saying.
And that's why you get you know, poets jailed in all these countries, unfortunately.
But you know that that's that's where I feel we're in starting to be in this moment.
This is why we also have right, you've even seen the poets that have originated from spoken word, who has always carried a different not a different kind of torch, but a much brighter torch in terms of social political issues.
How they have become.
More a part of the forefront right now you have poets like Patricia Smith or teachers at Princeton, right, that sense of the collective voice, the voice that sort of that sort of is about we, and and dares the question that we has been coming more and more important. So yeah, I think everybody, every art and every discipline has to do their own their own part. But again, the work is quieter, or we don't always see it, right, Yeah, the ripple takes a while, man.
So it's it's it's interesting Richard with you, I mean, and you kind of answered this question a bit there is you do see a balance of the art with the activism or even in some ways from which while I'm hearing you say, you almost see them intertwined into one. Right, even said our joy is our resistance. That is a form of revolution in itself. Just writing about the beauty, I mean for you, I mean, how do you? Because I do feel reading your work there is a very deep,
deep tenderness. There's a deep consideration for for something, a nurturing for something. How do you, I mean, when you're confronting is you know, issues with history, pain, you write poems for marriage equality, reopening the US embassy in Cuba, tragedy, there's triumph. How do you kind of keep your tenderness right? How do you keep that beauty still as a thread in your work? I mean where do you locate that? For you?
I mean where where do you find that within yourself?
Yeah? I think it comes down to empathy. And empathy is such.
A weird word in English because it's so close to sympathy, right, but it is real. Empathy is has a different kind of connotation. It's really about really stepping outside of yourself, right. But also where does that come from?
For me? I think it.
Comes from Uh maybe perhaps the empathy I wish I would have had, right so as an immigrant, as a gay, as a gay man, as as a gay man with my grandmother who was also verbally abusive. You know, I always think, I guess I side with kind of the underdog, and I think what I want to give them instead of telling them you're the underdog or this is wrong or right?
How can I uplift everyone? Right?
Like, how can I how can I open open up, open up new ways of looking at but also You're right, there's a it's always I think with love somehow with empathy, because I think it's just a real deep belief in me. You know, as a cliche goes, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, and I kind of or to quote Michael Jackson, and I'm a lover, not a fighter, right, you know, art, I think art for me, and I think there's.
Many ways of handling that, right.
Different poets handle it different ways, which can be just as effective. But for me, it's very much ingrained in that always feeling like like that other, and therefore the empathy that I'm just about putting out their empathy right and lifting people up.
And saying Jane Hirshfield, I think it was Jane.
Hersfield and might be misquoting this because it's one of those things you hear at a cocktail party or something, but she said, poetry is simply a hand reaching out and saying me too.
And I've never forgotten that, right, It's a hand that it says me too, and then me too.
Is not just the people you're you know, it's not just my LGBTQ family, It's not just my immigrant family. It's all of us have felt pain, we've all felt displaced, we've all felt lost, right, we've all felt joy, we've all felt ecstasy and desire, and so it's just yeah, me too, here's the poem, Me too, And so so
that's part of what And you're right. I've learned from a lot of times from writing occasional or commissioned poems that I think the tenderness that you feel coming through, even when it can be something like a poem for Boston Strong, which is something I didn't experience directly, you know, something that was written for the people of Boston.
I think what you're sensing there is that this is a big lesson in terms of craft that I realized.
An occasional poem isn't really just about the occasion, but it's about what one feels about the occasion. In other words, like a poem, Like every poem, a poem's poets feelings have to really sort of guide the poem and inform the poem. And that's the tenderness I think you feel. And for me, just to give you that example of Boston Trunk, my heart was really broken by the little boy Martin that that that past that died and that was my emotional way into that poem and saying, you know,
I have an emotional authority to write this. Now I can write with honesty and with real feeling, and so.
Again, even that poem.
Is sort of a poem of empathy for the people of Boston and victims and the survivors. So yeah, I always try to find that that way. That's my way into poetry a lot.
Absolutely. Oh, I love that. I love the individual that you quoted right there. Poetry is about you give someone a poem. It's them just telling you me too, and you reading it, you're saying you know what, me too. So I love that and I love that that stayed with you, and I think that'll stay with the folks that are listening. So thanks so much for that. Now, moving quite along here, Yeah, you have your memoir, The Prince of Love called. I said that it correctly said that,
please correct me. But it's being developed for television. My goodness. Congratulations. Now, I mean, what is that like? I mean is that? I mean you've already had so many I've made it moments. Is that another one? Just to kind of keep keep sticking that nail in that wall? I mean that is that is huge and that's so amazing. I mean, what's it like to really see your life translated into a whole new media I'm a TV show and really tell us about how that process began and what that's gonna
what that's going to transform into. Uh as we look forward to seeing that on television.
Sure, Sure, And I should warn people though, I mean development, there's still one big hurdle after that, which is the studio that actually buys the you know, now we're working on it right, but still even get to development, and it's a big deal. So I'm not I'm not downplaying that, but it's still there's still that one b card.
So again, you were saying, like how many times I go after things or not?
So I happened to be I was a speaker at the Aspen Ideas Festival, and I met Michael Eisner, who is the former CEO of Disney World, and and I was just like, I didn't even know he had like a company now that options books and whatnot. But I was just I told him, im, I guess how many times I've been in Disney World.
He's like coming in like fifty eight times near in Miami. That's what you do.
Anyway, we got to talking about just that that it was just a very for me. It was just very uncarafter Michael. I mean, I do care that you're Michael Wiser, but I was just really wanted to connect with him, like we're the same love I have for this place. And so it turned out he had this option company and the optioned the book, and so we've been He's also made made a co writer because he it'd be
smart enough. I think that he said, you know, it's such a particular and unique and important story that we don't want someone else to like.
Be met messing it up that are really getting the nuances of it. So he's very aware of that.
So I have I'm working with someone who has knows more of the mechanics of like what works, because I don't. I've never written for television. What's been What's been great? There's It is a big dream come true for me, and in the sense that I'm kind of a TV holic again for reasons we were talking about earlier. TV was my window into this country that I thought that I wanted to belong to, like the whole you know, I dream of Genie.
So I always wanted.
To see what it's always been a dream to have. Like what when I wrote the book, I almost wrote it episodically because I was like, I hope this is a TV show someday, because I could see the whole Blanco family.
So so that's just exciting in and of itself.
What it's really weird, not weird, but what's different of course, which is kind of like a little like playwriting, although you have more tricks when you do TV because you have lighting and sound.
And all these other things going on. You know, it's and you can cut it, edit, you know, all this other stuff.
But was you know, as opposed to writing poetry or even a memoir where you're really detailing things and scenes and the furniture in the room, and you know, it's really mostly about dialogue and plot and sort of learning how to pull back from that and letting you know.
If you've ever read a script, like even for something like Seinfeld, it's not even that funny.
Yeah, it's the magic of the how, what what the what the actors bring to it. How it's all on folds on that say so. So it's also been a process of trusting and letting go as a writer, I have to you know, you know, the club has to be this color or like that's not exactly the right food for the scene like that.
Yeah, no, that's I mean, but what an exciting process. I mean, I know, like you said, you know you're still waiting for that studio, but I mean to even be in development, I mean, and that that kind of already that hookup with Michael Eisner. I mean, I think you're I think you're good as golden honestly, Richard, I don't think you're going to really have much of a problem with him back in you what is.
Such a champion too, and we're talking about how people feel things, you know, so he's like he loves the story because he's like this Jewish kid that grew up you know, Brooklyn and completely feeling.
Like the other.
So you know, so that's the hand too, Like he just adores the story and like, what would a Cuban and a Jewish comment, Well, it's it's still diaspora in a way, right, and not in a way it is right.
Tell me kind of, I mean, and you know again you hear kind of these you know, these moments that you have and I'm sure when you look back on just how opportunities have came about for you. I'm sure it's been a collection of smaller moments where you didn't even come into a thinking that. I mean, if you could even speak to people that are listening to this, the are novice poets, you know, they could only dream of a career like yours, Richard, I mean, but what
would you say to them, though? You know, what would you say to them in terms of expansion, maybe of poetry looking outside the box? Then maybe the rigid way in which academia schooling has taught us that writing specifically poetry can box us into what would you say to people that want to really see their career flourish and didn't don't really have maybe the open mind, but are looking for that.
Yeah, so you know, I think this applies the most everything.
You obviously have to show up, and you have to do the work right and try to constantly honing your skills right and forgetting accolades because you know, you got to get back to that.
It's just you and the poem, right, It's just.
Yeah, the I guess it depends on what stage you are a lot of my undergraduates get a little ahead of themselves, and they're like.
We want to publish them like this.
Your job right now is to learn how to write the best poem you can write, and there'll be time to publish. Don't worry about that right now. I mean, you have to share your work if you want, put it on Instagram if you want. But don't feel like it's a vocation not a career right now. Right Well, it's always a vocation at some points, right So, I.
Guess it depends where you are. But I guess I'll tell you what I've done. You know, you just you just you just stick it. You just have to show up.
I mean, I can't explain it the way I would say that, you know, when we have other things in our lives, even my engineering, right I gave up promotions.
At some point.
I told my boss I only want to work thirty hours a week. I want to get benefits. And because they already knew I was a writer and I was out of my first book.
But I guess that's what I want to say. It's there's a danger in losing.
Sight of of that dream, right and then just not writing or just so and not participating in that world anymore, and so I always say, set up your life to sort of feed feed that part of you, right, if you're serious about it, because because most of us will have to do something else, right, unless we're trust fund babies and are just living off whatever the trust right, we're going to have to find some other kind of lively you know, not only that it's healthy to have
something else sometimes too, that can you know. So so I would say to always, you know, again, show up the other little tidbit of advice. I would say, it's very hard to be in that space about career expansion and all that stuff and be in the creative space at the same time, and so you should try to compartment compartmentalize those Like, first of all, you need to have work right to be get anywhere. Right, You're not going to get anywhere without good work. That's or in
good work. I mean, you know that's relative too, right, that always that's subjective. But so what I try to do is your moments of or not moments or really periods of intense creativity and then create something. Usually it's a book. And then I just switched to complete marketing. You know, give me a reading, let me do this right, Like it's time to hit the road, it's time to send to review urgs.
It's time and.
That's another part of our job, right, But it's hard to do those at the same time.
Because you're you're kind of you know that other stuff.
You're always you're putting yourself out there in a different way. That's kind of is important, but it's also not the same thing as you know, putting yourself out in your own work, right, the chances you're taking with you sitting at the desk, which that's important. So I like to compartmentalize those things, and I think you know that's part of that's part of how you you know, you keep on moving forward and again put you know, there's moments
to be out there and active. We pursue stuff that's going to help your I'm going to use the word vocation instead of career because I think that's really what
it is. And then those opportunities start happening and multiplying because the other the other thing is also I always tell you know, being part of community of writers, that's important, right, like just being in community, going to poetry readings, going to if you have an opportunity to teach a workshop, let's say at a at a community center, being part of poetry in some other way too, that that's part of our what makes us energetically feel like keeps on lifting us up, keeps us.
Feeling like we are writers that we are. Also there's other.
People in our same shoes too, So so yeah, I would, And I guess you know, the bottom line is you got to remain true to your voice. And that's that that covers a lot of ground. But there is a lot of intimidation out there to write like so and so, or do this like so and so. Yeah, you know, find find I mean, I'm not saying, you know, find finding our voice.
You know, I don't want to excuse poetry that's not you know, that's my voice. That's not what I'm saying.
If the boy, if the poem is you know, not where it should be, or the poetry is in Britschard, but it's really being authentic to your voice. And I think there's a lot of danger in that when we start thinking about MFA programs, when we saw start writing
like each other. So always keep that in mind and find something that you really really care an obsession, what is home, something that is really a deep part of your big question in life, and let let every poem sort of start from there, and the rest will come.
I think absolutely the rest is still unwritten. We love it, we love it, we love it.
All right, well, right, you know exactly.
Exactly exactly, shout out Natasha Beddingfield.
There we go.
Now, all right, Richard, Now you've said, there's a quote that you've said, you said, great art keeps asking questions. Now, if you could leave us all with one question that we want to keep asking about home, about love, about life, or about America, what would it be?
Yeah?
I think it's it's we've been sort of circling around it, I think, because I think, you know, the questions I have in my head are also thinking like what am I going to be writing about next? And how and why and how that's going to happen. But I've been thinking, and I think it started with how to love a country? The question on my mind. Of course, Okay, we can say, you know, I you know, I have almost you know, an epigenetic trauma of exile because of my mother being pregnantly.
I'm really scared about what's happening right now right in our country. I mean there are days when I'm like, am I gonna have to do like my mom and like leave and like.
Start a holy life somewhere else, literally because there's no other choice.
So so the question that I'm asking how much can I do?
What should I be doing? Is it just poetry? Right?
Because the pen is mightier than the sword, but the sword's out there, you know, So I'm trying to see what.
Is that space? How?
Yeah, like what should poetry be doing in the world right now? For me and for us all, but also beyond the sort of very sort of patu sort of let's heald the divide kind of thing.
And maybe this has something to do with empathy.
But I'm feeling like there's this shifting momentum in some weird way that this country is still our country is still very much stuck on this idea of independence.
Right.
We haven't shaken that off for good reason, right, Like that's we broke away from whatever. But really, if we're going to survive, it's really about how do we shift that thinking to interdependence?
Right?
Like that really that's the next highest level of thinking. And I'm thinking that that's that's kind of what I started. I think hope to show, hope to show in the inaugural poem that whether you know it or not, we're all connected, right, and all this survival really belongs on up with all of us are a cog, you know, a gear and this and this thing called life. We kind of learned that in the pandemic, but soon forgot it, right, So, uh so that's the question. It's really a question of
how what what is interdependence? How do we get there? Like, what does that look like? And it's just it's yes, it's our country, but that's a big word.
It's also our communities. It's also our family, all the.
Divides that are big and small out there, and and how do we how do we use language to some degree? And that comes from that space.
Absolutely absolutely, I love that as the one question he would leave us to keep on asking, all right, Richard, our last question of the interview of the day of the night you ask every poet on the poet Speaks podcast, Richard, why do you need to get your words out?
Okay?
I don't know out, but there might be two sides of the same question, two sides of the same coin, right, So, and I always tell my students.
This which they kind of freak out a bit.
I tell I'm writing a poem is the stupidest, most arrogant, self serving, dumbest thing you can do in the world. And then I also felt it's also the most generous, selfish, self less, gregarious, honest, most beautiful thing you can do in the world. And I perceived to explain that, you know, when a poem first begins in us, we have to come with all the blood, sweat and tears. We have to come with all you know, everything that is not
why bother. You know, we have to believe that our lives need need art right, and I need.
To make art out of this why to understand it?
Every time I finish a poem or almost finished a poem, I feel like I learned something new about myself, about my world, about people in my life, about a memory that I've had for thirty years haunting me, about a current event, about politics.
And I think when I discover that for myself, this is.
How it turns from something selfish into something selfless, because then that discovery is there again the hand that says me too, And then your poem is a gift in the world.
And that's why I want. That's why that's why I write my poems, and that's why I.
Want them out there, is for those stories that come back to you that say that poem made me think of when blank blank blank, that poem I'd never thought about this, but that poem shifted to something in me, that poem, because what they're seeing is what happened to me. In some ways, they're seeing it in their own lives and maybe a different context.
And so that's why I want it out.
There, because it does no good just sitting on my my notebooks are on my desk or in my computer.
It does no good just sitting there. It has to be on the world.
All right, Well, Richard, thank you so much. We really appreciate you being on a podcast today. Before we wrap up, wrap up, please do I mean tell us what is the rest of twenty twenty five looking like for you? Any events you want to tell us about, and please do drop below tell us links social media websites where we can check out all of your amazing work.
So right now I'm teaching two classes, which keeps me kind of busy just doing you know, some gigs here and there. I have something very exciting that it just started two weeks ago. So I am starting to do through my website, online online courses, book consultations, portfolio consultations, just trying something new. There's a free one coming up on November twentieth, which is just called It's just a
forum again free of charge. And so you think you're not a popet, that's the name, and it's just I want to share my story about like we talked about like because for a while, I just I also had sort of this imposter syndrome, right, how can I be an engineer and a poet?
Until everything started really gelling together for me?
And so I want to share that story, and I want others to share their stories about and again sort of how do we make our way through our vocations while we have to do have other jobs, some of which we love, some of which we might not love.
So just opening up that conversation so uh so that I'm really excited about that venture. I've I have.
Yet to start writing again for my last book because I'm that kind of writer. I told you I shift gears and I'm like all in, like you know, out there, out there mode. So uh that's the that's the question that I'm asking everyone, and then I'm asking myself. That's probably gonna be what the next book is. Other than that, uh yeah, just to usually can always check out my website w w W w w W Richard Blanco dot com with iphen and all my events are let's there
as well as latest news. Also, you know, I love using social media, not just for me, but really to uplift other poets, uplift poetry in general. So there's things out there and it quotes, book recommendations, these kinds of things that hopefully you can get turned on to.
If you were to kill me.
I don't know my text, my handles, but Richard Blanco poet. And then one is poet Richard Blanco mostly mostly Instagram and Facebook, but that there's not that too many Richard Blancos out there. The only other one is a real estate agent and a soccer player, so you'll.
Know if you're in the wrong until three Yeah, different people, So all right, perfect, perfect, Well, thank you again so much, Richard.
Everyone.
Richard's links will be down below in the description box no matter where you're listening to this amazing podcast. Again, all right, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.
Richard thank you, and thank you Amanda for all you're doing and all you do. We're all into the same team.
Absolutely, absolutely again everyone.
Richard's links will be down below no matter where you're listening to his podcast again.
This is the Pold Speaks podcast. We'll talk to you soon. Alive one