“Everything I am is here still, sitting with my grandfather on lawn chairs watching plum sunsets and the clouds of his tabaco vanishing into the wind, into the chirp of crickets echoing back from stars that haven’t moved since I first saw them, and the moon not yet replaced by the glow of the city’s lights”
—From ““Sitting on My Mother’s Porch in Westchester, Florida”, a poem in Richard Blanco’s Looking for the Gulf Motel, which was the last book of poems Sara Habein loved.One Today by Richard Blanco
One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
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.
Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
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.
One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
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.
One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
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.
We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
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.
“ IV. A week before Thanksgiving I explained to my abuelita about the Indians and the Mayflower, how Lincoln set the slaves free; I explained to my parents about the purple mountain’s majesty, “one if by land, two if by sea,” the cherry tree, the tea party, the amber waves of grain, the “masses yearning to be free,” liberty and justice for all, until finally they agreed: this Thanksgiving we would have turkey, as well as pork.”
—Richard Blanco, from “América”Read the rest of the poem here. We’re just minutes away from hearing Blanco’s inaugural poem.
One Today
(Here’s the text of the poem delivered by Cuban-American Richard Blanco on occasion of President Barack Obama’s inauguration)
One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
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.
Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
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.
One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
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.
One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
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.
We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
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
One Today- by Richard Blanco
action.2013pic.orghttp://action.2013pic.org/page/-/Text%20of%20Richard%20Blanco’s%20Inaugural%20Poem.pdf
One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores, 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 2
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.
Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
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.
One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed 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 3
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.
One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes 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.
We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
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
My brother and I should still be playing Parcheesi,
my father should still be alive, slow dancing
with my mother on the sliding-glass balcony
of the Gulf Motel. No music, only the waves
keeping time, a song only their minds hear
ten-thousand nights back to their life in Cuba.
My mother’s face should still be resting against
his bare chest like the moon resting on the sea,
the stars should still be turning around them.
-Looking For the Gulf Motel by Richard Blanco. Julie Marie Wade reviews!
“We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight 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”
—Full text of “One Today”, Richard Blanco’s Inaugural Poem (PDF)What the Hell Has Happened to Inaugural Poetry?
The worst possible thing that could happen to poetry has just happened again: a presidential inauguration.
Poetic rabble-rousers such as those housed in M.F.A. programs, high school literature teacher conventions in beige-y hotel conference rooms, and a few suburban Caribou Coffee open mic nights were probably as dismayed as I was Monday. If you were looking to return poetry from the brink of obscurity by pointing once-and-for-all to a contemporary, stirring display of prosodical power, you were sorely disappointed by all-around nice guy/memoirist/national poet laureate Richard Blanco, who basically got up and read some children’s book lines about unity and pencil-colored busses.
Once again, poetry was the time-for-a-piss-break-it’s-a-monster-ballad equivalent for the U.S. Presidential Inauguration. And it doesn’t have to be this way.
Maya Angelou said this in 1993 at President Clinton’s inaugural poem: “Your armed struggles for profit / Have left collars of waste upon / My shore, currents of debris upon my breast. / Yet, today I call you to my riverside, / If you will study war no more.”
Ummm, yes.
Yes, those lines (a fairly straightforward, albeit elegant and sorta-bold statement to make in a capitalistic/militaristic empire) actually made it onto national television. In 1961, when the about-to-croak Robert Frost was asked to deliver a poem for President Kennedy’s inauguration, the old bard from Bread Loaf cooked up a real bore. But when the sun reflecting off the snow blocked his vision of the paper at the podium, he instead recited from memory a real jinjoistic, but stirring knock-out from 1942 called “The Gift Outright.” It includes this line: “The land was ours before we were the land’s/ She was ours before we would become her people.”
Ummm, double yes.
Which brings us back to the two most recent inaugural’s attempts at poetry. First off, cheers to Obama for foisting poetry out into our face—even though the old form’s protégé and now usurper, hip hop, was resting just behind the walls (where Jay-Z sat with his wife the Lip-Syncher-in-Chief). There have actually only been five poets to speak at inaugurations, but the most recent two are totally in the category of also-ran. Four years ago, Elizabeth Alexander read a poem that sounded more like a flight attendant’s speech (“Someone is trying to make some music somewhere”) and, curiously, began a trend of referencing pencils in inauguration poems (“Take out your pencils. Begin.”). This year, aside from a moving, albeit not uncouth line about Newtown, his grocery-bagging mother, and that bit about hope being a constellation we should map or whatever, Blanco sent the audience to the porta-Johns.
And not just because video cameras caught House Majority Whip Eric Cantor staring in bewilderment throughout the address (Cantor, in addition to being an asshole, is on record for skipping the president’s second primetime television address so he could see Britney Spears’ Circus tour). But, Blanco’s poem was like Bono on an off day. Like post-Achtung Baby, Bono. A heavy oaring of monosyllabic truisms (“All of us as vital as the one light we move through”) mixed with undaunted sentimentality (“My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors”). It felt like something I’d download with pictures on my iPhone to put a kid to sleep tonight to. And that sun, that sun is for all of us, and so is the moon. We’re one. Made from many.
Basically, DO go gentle into that good Porta-John restless crowds, honestly please.
Blanco reaffirmed that in 2013 poetry has no purpose in American society other than to cobble together a few folksy images about playing nicely, supporting each other, and never giving up. Obviously I don’t agree this is poetry’s limitation. Obviously, I wish the President would’ve chosen anyone else: Ted Kooser, Junot Diaz, or Phillip Levine, all poets with “mid America” vibes that also lack YouTube videos attached to their names excoriating the Tea Party or corporate America or Rush Limbaugh or white people (GOD FORBID!).
But, poetry took a hit this week, people. Tuesday night at a bar in my town, our local poet laureate cornered me and leveled our generation for lacking any literary balls. I told him about my students struggling through Emerson’s “On Self-Reliance,” and he fumed, saying that in the mid-19th Century, “Emerson was a rock star! He went from town to town and people paid to see him—not even educated people, just regular Joes! You can tell your fucking students THAT!” He then went on a tear about the “Googlization” of millennials, a treatise slightly undermined when he backed up his claim with reference to a YouTube video. He then educated me on how handwriting got done right in the 18th Century, which re-awoke me to the fact he was crazy and should not win.
But, I’m worried. I’m worried for poetry that he might be right. That it’s been rendered—for whatever reason, capitalism, shorter attention spans, increasingly thriftiness in our language, the burgeoning STEM education movement in America—a glorified opportunity for cheesy, sentimental Hallmark bullshit to be spewed into American homes without any intellectual teeth. Yes the presidential inauguration is a ceremony meant for something grandiose and sparkly and heart-warming. But can’t our ceremonies be mixed with a little more ambiguity, challenging allusions, thought-sparking insights?
Aristotle says poetry is “a more philosophical and a higher thing than history.” But, if I’ve been disappointed at all about Obama’s presidency, I honestly think it starts with the anticlimactic inaugural poets. Please, next time, give me a reason to hate Eric Cantor even more for staring mindlessly and dumbly at the poet laureate. Not reason for bipartisan agreement.
