Speaker 1: This is the Poet Speaks, a show all about or tradition,
Speaker 1: hip hop and cardboard boxes on the bloc, Reget Bandolero
Speaker 1: so your heavy metal punk rock and La Junior Hyde pop.
Speaker 1: What makes poetry so amazing, so incredible is this absolute
Speaker 1: fascination and ability to change our lives, the old tradition,
Speaker 1: the reason why we speak.
Speaker 2: This is the Poet Speaks. Hello everyone, and welcome back
Speaker 2: to the Poet Speaks Podcast. Now, our next guest is
Speaker 2: someone who's work truly bridges the personal and the political.
Speaker 2: A poet who reminds us that identity belonging in home
Speaker 2: are not fixed places, but living poems we keep rewriting.
Speaker 2: He's the fifth inaugural poet of the United States, the
Speaker 2: author of How To Love a Country in a voice
Speaker 2: that continues to define the American experience in all it's beauty,
Speaker 2: all of it's great, great complexities. Everyone, please, welcome to
Speaker 2: the post Speaks Podcast. Richard Blanco. Richard, how are you.
Speaker 3: Great? Thanks Amanda, It's wonderful to be here. Great intro.
Speaker 2: Hey, no problem, no problem, It's a I feel like
Speaker 2: an intro. Just it makes you feel good, don't It
Speaker 2: makes you feel good before you get into some questions.
Speaker 4: Right, absolutely covers.
Speaker 3: A lot of ground.
Speaker 2: There we go, there we go. That's what the intro
Speaker 2: is for. So tell us before we begin, I want
Speaker 2: to know where are you currently at? Where are we
Speaker 2: talking to you in the world as of right now.
Speaker 5: I'm in Miami, Florida and the same house I grew
Speaker 5: up at my mother's house. So I'm teaching at Florida
Speaker 5: and University's a semester and I'm just serve, just living
Speaker 5: with my mom, she's eighty nine, and just serve keeping it,
Speaker 5: you know, keeping tabs on her, make sure she's okay.
Speaker 5: So that's where I am, back home my home city.
Speaker 2: Wow, wow, Okay. Now you're a born and bred Miamiami,
Speaker 2: Miami boy, right, Miami, right.
Speaker 3: Almost. I got here when I was four years old.
Speaker 5: I was born in Madrid, actually, and I got to
Speaker 5: the United States when I was forty five days old,
Speaker 5: first in New York City, and then eventually we moved
Speaker 5: to Miami, which.
Speaker 3: Was a typical sort of rout for a lot of
Speaker 3: Cuban exiles.
Speaker 5: You know, in nineteen sixty eight in Miami, there wasn't
Speaker 5: as much opportunity as there was up in the northeast.
Speaker 5: So but yes, and you can say it's about as
Speaker 5: native as Miami.
Speaker 2: And gets wow, amazing, amazing. Now, okay, before we get
Speaker 2: into that, I mean, we have such you have such
Speaker 2: a long breath, like you said, of your childhood growing up,
Speaker 2: you have such a long breath of so much of
Speaker 2: where you've been to get to where you are today.
Speaker 2: But you know what, I kind of want to start
Speaker 2: off this question. I want to start off with this
Speaker 2: question because I know you have said your life's obsession
Speaker 2: has been the word home right that you were as
Speaker 2: you said, right now you're made in Cuba, assembled in Spain,
Speaker 2: imported to the US. Now, after all these years, Richard,
Speaker 2: and after I mean you've probably were in thousands upon
Speaker 2: thousands of poems. Now, I mean, what what does home
Speaker 2: even still mean to you? I mean, does it still
Speaker 2: feel like a question? Or do you think you know
Speaker 2: you've finally found that answer within you know, your body,
Speaker 2: or even as you know your latest piece of poetry,
Speaker 2: the latest piece that you're offering the world suggests you know,
Speaker 2: what does home?
Speaker 4: What is home even now?
Speaker 3: For you? Yeah? Sure, great question. You know, asking what's
Speaker 3: home is like asking what is love? Really?
Speaker 5: It's such a big word, and so it's it's changed
Speaker 5: over time. It's changed because I've changed, It's changed because
Speaker 5: circumstances have changed. Like everything in life, we grow, we
Speaker 5: mature and what not. So I'll try to be brief.
Speaker 5: But so there's been very distinct phases in each one
Speaker 5: of these are sort of marked by a book.
Speaker 3: The very first book was really the question.
Speaker 5: Of home more and in cultural identity, all right, being
Speaker 5: a Cuban American and and sort of that that investigation
Speaker 5: going to Cuba for the first time, understanding of the motherland,
Speaker 5: so to speak. Then after I started reading some revisionist history,
Speaker 5: I became a little bit of a sort of an
Speaker 5: America bachelor, and I just wanted to be Cuban all
Speaker 5: the way.
Speaker 3: You know, that's my real country.
Speaker 5: You know, I got to do whatever it takes to
Speaker 5: sort of make sure Cuba is a free and democratic
Speaker 5: country and whatnot. So that was a phase, but that
Speaker 5: was also, of course beyond my control.
Speaker 3: So eventually I moved.
Speaker 5: I moved from the Republic of Miami to Cartford, Connecticut,
Speaker 5: my first teaching job, which was this big you know,
Speaker 5: I was thinking New England, Okay, finally going to the
Speaker 5: real America, right, and sort of thinking about what that means.
Speaker 5: And that's that's partly my second book. And then, of
Speaker 5: course that fantasy of that real American story is exactly that.
Speaker 5: It's a romanticized version of what immigrants grow up with.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: So I started traveling a lot, and then those travels.
Speaker 3: With that same question with his home.
Speaker 5: So I started writing a lot about more cosmopolitan sense
Speaker 5: of what my home might be. My home might be Venice,
Speaker 5: home might be London, home might be somewhere in between.
Speaker 5: And then and then I had put the question of
Speaker 5: home a little bit to rust. As the poet Bosho said,
Speaker 5: you know, life is a journey, and the journey itself
Speaker 5: is home. But then when the White House called for
Speaker 5: me to write a home, which was basically the assignment
Speaker 5: was write a poem for America, I read all those questions,
Speaker 5: Am I even an American?
Speaker 3: What does that mean?
Speaker 5: All those questions resurfaced, and in a way the poem
Speaker 5: is an answer to those questions and the affirmative saying no,
Speaker 5: damn it, I am part of this narrative. We are
Speaker 5: all part of this narrative. And then since then, I,
Speaker 5: like you said, the latest book has been yet the
Speaker 5: latest invasion of what my sense of home is. And
Speaker 5: I'm realizing that I've never lost home, and I've never
Speaker 5: maybe even gained one, but that home is the sum
Speaker 5: total of all one's experiences, which are beautiful in their
Speaker 5: own way. But you know, you can't necessarily reclaim some
Speaker 5: of these spaces anymore, but they still live in you,
Speaker 5: in your body, and that's why the book is called
Speaker 5: Homeland of My Body. So I've turned from outward sort
Speaker 5: of looking inward and saying, no, all that is.
Speaker 3: Always with me, and who knows what the next phase
Speaker 3: will be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when I hear that, it's kind of something that
Speaker 2: you said like kind of ripped out to me.
Speaker 4: And I think a lot of people can.
Speaker 2: Relate that have that immigrant child of immigrants whatever that
Speaker 2: looks like, first generation entering into this new country. You
Speaker 2: had said you had moved to what was it, Connecticut
Speaker 2: and you felt like, Okay, I'm actually part of America America?
Speaker 2: Could you expand a little bit more on what that
Speaker 2: kind of meant when you what you mean when you
Speaker 2: say that, sure, well.
Speaker 5: I mean for anybody out there that are visiting Miami
Speaker 5: for an extended period of time, you know, Miame is
Speaker 5: kind of a cultural bubble, right, it's a very Latinized city,
Speaker 5: and so.
Speaker 3: You sort of you sort of grow it.
Speaker 5: You grow up sort of not feeling like the other
Speaker 5: really in some weird way, but the other nest comes like, no,
Speaker 5: I want to be that person on TV.
Speaker 3: I want to be or to think that that is
Speaker 3: the real that the Brady.
Speaker 5: Bunch is the real America, or that you know, all
Speaker 5: these sitcom or the foods you would see on TV
Speaker 5: that we didn't grow up with, like easy cheese. So
Speaker 5: you know, this mythology of what is the America? What
Speaker 5: is the real American? Because in a weird way it's ironic,
Speaker 5: but because you're surrounded by more or less like ninety
Speaker 5: eight percent of my class with Cuban or Latin next
Speaker 5: folks just like me.
Speaker 3: So you know, it's human nature.
Speaker 5: You know, you're you in a where do way you exoticize?
Speaker 5: That's the word that American as, which usually you know
Speaker 5: Latinos get exoticized themselves by other people. Right, you are stereotyped.
Speaker 5: So I had a stereotypic vision of what it meant
Speaker 5: to be America that was still with me even in
Speaker 5: my even when in during the inauguration when well, when
Speaker 5: they asked me to write the poem, there was still
Speaker 5: a part of me that, well, am I really part
Speaker 5: of this American narrative? You know, I kind of feel
Speaker 5: like it, But am I really part of this country
Speaker 5: as not only as an immigrant, bred as a gay
Speaker 5: man as well, and so uh so, Yeah, I went
Speaker 5: up north looking for that, you know, the sleigh rides
Speaker 5: in the snow and the little white picket fence and
Speaker 5: and not to say that parts of that weren't there, right,
Speaker 5: but it's certainly I call it the exile of my
Speaker 5: exile because I felt like it was I was, I
Speaker 5: was in his country. I didn't really know at all.
Speaker 5: I thought I would know from from again stereotypes.
Speaker 2: But yeah, now that's fascinating. I mean, you are correct
Speaker 2: Miami versus Connecticut, I mean, like down south versus up East.
Speaker 2: I mean that's part of really that that part of
Speaker 2: the United States that's you know, very Boston. You know
Speaker 2: that kind of I don't know how to say this
Speaker 2: politically correct, but you know, maybe a bit Yankee thirteen Colonies.
Speaker 4: You definitely definitely do have that type of vibe.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: I love that you said that, though, because I didn't
Speaker 2: think that's very honest. Now, before we kind of move on,
Speaker 2: I want to say this too. You know, so you
Speaker 2: were an engineer before you were even a full time poet.
Speaker 2: I mean, like, so that is such a I guess
Speaker 2: if first rip, when you first hear that, anyone's gonna
Speaker 2: just say, hey, that those are two completely one eighty
Speaker 2: different sides of the coin in terms of a career.
Speaker 2: I mean, but how do you see that? How did you?
Speaker 2: I mean tell us, how did you even transition? Was
Speaker 2: it something just in your heart that you wanted to
Speaker 2: just become be a full time poet, full time writer
Speaker 2: words myth? Or was engineering? I mean, was that something
Speaker 2: you were passionate about? Tell us a bit about how
Speaker 2: you made that career transition.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean that that's also tidy. You know, all
Speaker 5: these stories sort of intersect. And that also ties into
Speaker 5: being an immigrant by forty five days, but also growing
Speaker 5: up in an immigrant family, so of course a working
Speaker 5: class immigrant, lower working class immigrant family, so I didn't
Speaker 5: have much exposure to the arts or the humanities or
Speaker 5: anything like that. Plus of course you know there's there's
Speaker 5: the more you know, those immigrant values or you know,
Speaker 5: you know, you're going to study something you know solid
Speaker 5: so that you can make a better living than us.
Speaker 5: You know, that kind of thing, which I think exists
Speaker 5: in other families as well, traditional, but especially it's really
Speaker 5: emphasized in an immigrant community. And then there's also a
Speaker 5: cultural divide because what little my parents knew about arts
Speaker 5: and humanities had to do with Cuba.
Speaker 3: My parents didn't even know who Robert Frost was or
Speaker 3: the Rolling.
Speaker 5: Stones for that matter, So so there's no sort of
Speaker 5: they couldn't even foster that even if they wanted to.
Speaker 3: And then my grandmother was.
Speaker 5: Was my primary caretaker, and she was very homophobic and
Speaker 5: uh and so at one time I wanted to study
Speaker 5: architecture and she thought that was too gay. So my
Speaker 5: choices and the arts that was an encourage from from
Speaker 5: from that point of view either.
Speaker 3: But I was great at math.
Speaker 5: I was always a left brain right brain kind of kid,
Speaker 5: one of those obnoxious kids. I got a's or a
Speaker 5: minuses and everything except physical education.
Speaker 3: And uh so I really didn't know what exactly I
Speaker 3: say about it. I was like, why not do engineering?
Speaker 5: And I thought the plan was to uh get my
Speaker 5: degree in engineering, specialize in structural engineering, go on, to
Speaker 5: get a master's in architecture along the way that obviously
Speaker 5: didn't happen, And it was really engineering that paved the
Speaker 5: road to poetry part in the pun. But I didn't
Speaker 5: realize half my like half my job was writing writing
Speaker 5: letters and reports and studies and proposals, which were the
Speaker 5: lifeblood of a consulting firm. And these are just narratives,
Speaker 5: these are but also thinking about audience and tone and
Speaker 5: word choice and diction and connotations and all this stuff
Speaker 5: like really made me dive deep into language. And I
Speaker 5: always knew I wanted to do something creative, you know,
Speaker 5: I just didn't know what that would be. But that
Speaker 5: triggered something. And what it triggered was a love for
Speaker 5: language that I realized went back to I never remember
Speaker 5: not knowing two languages since as far as I can remember,
Speaker 5: I was the first one to effectively learn English in
Speaker 5: my family, and so I remember translating for my parents
Speaker 5: when I was four or five years old, and I
Speaker 5: realized that language. I think that imprinted in me. And
Speaker 5: you know, I didn't take language for granted. Granted was
Speaker 5: language wasn't just something you communicate with, but it was
Speaker 5: a way seeing the world.
Speaker 3: There was power and language.
Speaker 5: I mean, your parents are your linguistic mercy, you know,
Speaker 5: in certain situations.
Speaker 3: And I think that was that then clicked on.
Speaker 5: But but I really I love both, and of course,
Speaker 5: by necessity, I've been a practicing civil engineer and poet
Speaker 5: for most of my adult life.
Speaker 3: Really the big break, the big big break was.
Speaker 5: Of course becoming presidentiary and augroup poet, which was a
Speaker 5: game changer. But like most artists, you know, you just
Speaker 5: we have to find, you know, some other way, means.
Speaker 3: Of a livelihood. But I loved it. I think there
Speaker 3: was there was an interesting.
Speaker 5: Balance because when I was when I was wearing a
Speaker 5: bad poetry day, I just my design bridge. When I
Speaker 5: was saying about engineering day, I just write poetry at
Speaker 5: work all day.
Speaker 3: And I think it was a healthy balance.
Speaker 5: And I always tell my students in my undergraduate class, Listen,
Speaker 5: even if you don't go on to become a poet,
Speaker 5: keep some art in your life always because it professions
Speaker 5: your mind and it gives these new ideas for whatever
Speaker 5: your career might be. But but yeah, that's kind of.
Speaker 3: What it happened.
Speaker 5: I mean, I you said the key word was as careers,
Speaker 5: they're very different.
Speaker 3: But also.
Speaker 5: But on the other hand, I think, as you know,
Speaker 5: designing is a very creative endeavor.
Speaker 3: I sometimes when I'm designing something, I feel the same
Speaker 3: sort of.
Speaker 5: Juices flowing is when I'm designing a poem, and it's
Speaker 5: like I like, I say, I create a bridge and
Speaker 5: I design a poem. You know, it's not those two
Speaker 5: things aren't mitually exclusive. But yes, careers they're very different obviously,
Speaker 5: But but I've carried them both and proudly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I love. What I love about that too,
Speaker 2: is you know you really kind of you expressed how
Speaker 2: a lot of them. Again, people from the outside looking
Speaker 2: in without the critical thinking lens, think they're two different things.
Speaker 2: But like you said, that's the lifeblood of consulting at
Speaker 2: a firm, right, you know, writing those proposals, you know,
Speaker 2: And it's it's the same thing with you know, a
Speaker 2: lawyer in a courtroom is using poe try to present
Speaker 2: or defend their case. Right, a doctor is you know,
Speaker 2: you're using poetry to you know, make the language translatable
Speaker 2: to their patient.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: So many people just don't put that into into the
Speaker 2: world lens of so much of what we do so aligned.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have to be so different than what we're
Speaker 2: really thinking. Even as a person. Let's say you do finance,
Speaker 2: there's poetry in that, you know what I mean, trying
Speaker 2: to explain numbers, crunching numbers, et cetera, et cetera. So
Speaker 2: I really really do love that, and it's it's this
Speaker 2: kind of metaphor, you know, again, like you said, your
Speaker 2: poems are still building those bridges, just in a in
Speaker 2: a just in a different way, maybe even in the
Speaker 2: same way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's so true.
Speaker 5: And you know, I think, you know, almost every human
Speaker 5: endeavor comes down to written and oral communication skills to
Speaker 5: be successful.
Speaker 3: But also it's also about synthesis of.
Speaker 5: Knowledge rather than this this sort of specialization. And unfortunately
Speaker 5: our educational system generally still silos everything, right, it gives
Speaker 5: you too much of one thing and not a golf
Speaker 5: across the board.
Speaker 3: And this is a whole other conversation.
Speaker 5: But that's what they're they're they're finding out with AI
Speaker 5: now that really specializing it is really not.
Speaker 3: A good idea anymore.
Speaker 5: You have to be a generalist to be able to
Speaker 5: really that's where the future is and where the arts
Speaker 5: and humanities are really going to matter. And but it's
Speaker 5: also a two way street. Like people don't realize how
Speaker 5: much left brain work there is in creating a poem, right,
Speaker 5: especially in the in the in the later stages.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: But a lot of times when I'm writing a poem,
Speaker 5: I'm looking for some kind of internal logic, I'm looking
Speaker 5: for a pattern. I'm looking for structure. I'm looking how
Speaker 5: to break that structure. Right, And you know, at the beginning,
Speaker 5: it's much more right. It's you know, the cigarettes of Martinez,
Speaker 5: you know, but there comes a point where you're actually
Speaker 5: you're you're you know, you're left braining the poem at
Speaker 5: some point, right, So that's also trueing The same happens
Speaker 5: when you create a bridge and you don't you don't
Speaker 5: begin a bridge with just surf, an unknown, a bunch
Speaker 5: of unknowns that you start trying to put together and
Speaker 5: stitch together into a design. And sometimes there's many failures, right,
Speaker 5: and you got to start it over again, or you
Speaker 5: have to redirect in the middle of all that. And
Speaker 5: I think, you know, we're all, we're all, we're you know,
Speaker 5: we're we're all left brand and right brand.
Speaker 3: I think we just don't always know that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, absolutely don't.
Speaker 3: Don't realize we're practicing it.
Speaker 2: Already absolutely absolutely Well, moving along here just a bit now,
Speaker 2: So Richard, I mean when when just this regular guy
Speaker 2: named President Barack Obama just chose you as is a
Speaker 2: nougural poet, I mean, your words literally became part of
Speaker 2: national consciousness. I actually do remember actually seeing you. I
Speaker 2: must have been I was, I was like a kid.
Speaker 2: I remember seeing that was when he was elected all
Speaker 2: those things, So I do remember seeing that on TV
Speaker 2: just so you know. So, I mean that was part
Speaker 2: of the national consciousness. And you at the time, I mean,
Speaker 2: you were the youngest inaugural poet, is that correct at
Speaker 2: that time? And you were the first openly gay man
Speaker 2: at that time to be the nogural poet. I mean
Speaker 2: you had a lot of first that was a really
Speaker 2: the gravity of that moment. Again, you became part of
Speaker 2: the national lexicon. I mean, what did it mean to
Speaker 2: craft the poem that you made? One today no one
Speaker 2: would speak for a country, especially at that time, very divided,
Speaker 2: I mean, and kind of what did you want to leave?
Speaker 2: What was the mark you want to lead there? When
Speaker 2: you Well, first off, I want to say, what was
Speaker 2: that call? Like, where do you even get that call?
Speaker 2: Does someone call from a burner phone. How the heck
Speaker 2: does that even? How does someone even get we really
Speaker 2: need to know. I mean that that's the real that's
Speaker 2: what people really want to know. How do you even
Speaker 2: get that call?
Speaker 3: Right? Right?
Speaker 5: There's a I will add though, I was also the
Speaker 5: first engineer, but that was yes, they didn't high that
Speaker 5: too much. Actually, I was just driving. I was driving
Speaker 5: from New York to my home in Maine, and I
Speaker 5: just get this phone call, which is weird because I
Speaker 5: have phone phobia. I rarely pick up the phone. But
Speaker 5: I was stuck in traffic, and I thought, what the hell?
Speaker 5: And I thought it was a practical joke. I didn't
Speaker 5: understand what they were saying.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: Wow, It was like and.
Speaker 5: Because you know nobody, this isn't something you apply for,
Speaker 5: It isn't something that you're shortlisted for. Your finalist is
Speaker 5: literally out of the blue, and they have your phone number.
Speaker 5: But so the person said, finally, she said no, like
Speaker 5: Robert Frost and Maya Angelou. I'm like, oh, okay, so
Speaker 5: you can imagine.
Speaker 3: I'm like, is this like some kind of dream? And
Speaker 3: I still didn't believe it.
Speaker 5: So I pulled over the side of the road and
Speaker 5: I googled the person's name, and sure enough it came
Speaker 5: up said presidential inaugural committee.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 5: My response, my immediate response was a little surprising for me.
Speaker 5: I just felt overcome with its an incredible sense of gratitude,
Speaker 5: and not because oh I was elected, I mean chosen
Speaker 5: to be this thing, but just thinking about again, all
Speaker 5: these stories intersect, right, the choices my mother leaving Cuba
Speaker 5: pregnant with me, the choices my parents made for me,
Speaker 5: all the sacrifices, you know, the typical sort of immigrant story, their.
Speaker 3: Belief and education.
Speaker 5: That all this stuff was at this moment was only
Speaker 5: really possible because of all the love and guidance that
Speaker 5: they gave me, and my grandparents and my community at
Speaker 5: large and my extended family.
Speaker 3: And so it was the sense of wow, you know,
Speaker 3: we think.
Speaker 5: That we were writing our own story after you know,
Speaker 5: when we get in our late teens, right or maybe
Speaker 5: even earlier, don't realize that a lot of that story
Speaker 5: has already been or the foundations of that story has
Speaker 5: already been written by the people around you, people that
Speaker 5: love and nurture you. So that was a beautiful, beautiful feeling.
Speaker 5: The whole world transfixed. Then came this sheer terror of having.
Speaker 5: They asked me to write three poems and in three weeks.
Speaker 5: So wow, which is not it is not I usually
Speaker 5: write a poem a week as a draft, but arguably
Speaker 5: not the most.
Speaker 3: Important poem in my life.
Speaker 5: And so the first poem was kind of a it
Speaker 5: was all right, but I think it was more of
Speaker 5: a warm up.
Speaker 3: The second poem was one today.
Speaker 5: And to get to that second point, Yeah, second poem,
Speaker 5: you know, like we were talking about earlier, there's something
Speaker 5: that was blocking me. It was a lot of writing
Speaker 5: poetry is right when you're not asking the questions that
Speaker 5: you're afraid to ask and you're not going there. And
Speaker 5: the question was am I even part of this country?
Speaker 5: Do I even love this country or eat enough to
Speaker 5: write a poem for? And does this country love me back?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 5: Yeah? And again that the poem is in some ways,
Speaker 5: in many ways, is a response to that, in the
Speaker 5: affirmative that yes, we're all our narratives are it's in
Speaker 5: our motto out of the many one. So that gave
Speaker 5: me a throne to the poem is something I felt
Speaker 5: I could really believe. In a little small anecdote to
Speaker 5: my very first creative writing assignment in my very first
Speaker 5: creative writing class with my mentor was still my mentor
Speaker 5: and now my colleague to this day. We read we
Speaker 5: read some Frost and Ginsburg and the Witman, and my
Speaker 5: assignment was write a poem about America. So in a way,
Speaker 5: that became the first poem in my first book.
Speaker 3: In a way, I've been.
Speaker 5: Writing that poem all my life by questioning what it
Speaker 5: means to be American and what does it mean to
Speaker 5: be Cuban, which are kind of the same question, right,
Speaker 5: What is identity?
Speaker 3: What is country? What is home? What is belonging? What
Speaker 3: is identity?
Speaker 5: So I called my mentors, I got the same assignment,
Speaker 5: only from the president.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, yeah, no, that is I mean, that's amazing,
Speaker 2: and it's I wonder. I mean at the time, I mean,
Speaker 2: were you did you let the gravity of that moment
Speaker 2: sink in fully or was it you had to wait
Speaker 2: some time after, you know, maybe weeks months after to
Speaker 2: really realize the momentum, the hugeness of that moment for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I really, I really, I really didn't. Because there's just
Speaker 5: three poems in three weeks. I mean a lot of
Speaker 5: things shifted, and yeah, a lot of help and including
Speaker 5: my husband and other friends, and hiring people to just
Speaker 5: let me.
Speaker 3: Write the poem right, to take care of the logistics
Speaker 3: and all that.
Speaker 5: So I was just go, go, go, right. The most
Speaker 5: important to me thinking it was, of course, write the
Speaker 5: best poem you can, right. And so when it really
Speaker 5: kind of hit me was when I was waiting to
Speaker 5: be called up to the podium.
Speaker 3: Uh, and I took. I took my mother with me.
Speaker 3: I mean I took.
Speaker 5: I had other guests, but you can only take one person,
Speaker 5: like right next to you. So on the platform there,
Speaker 5: and it was the first time that I could actually
Speaker 5: I was you know, the poems are done, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm ready, I've here, I've had the sound check where
Speaker 5: you could finally just breathe and take.
Speaker 3: In the moment.
Speaker 5: It was like, oh my god, like a gay immigrant
Speaker 5: kid is going to read a poem for the whole
Speaker 5: country and it's me.
Speaker 3: But it wasn't. It was more like it.
Speaker 5: Was this feeling of I'm looking at my mother who
Speaker 5: grew up in a dirt floor home in Cuba.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: It was this feeling of really the most beautiful things
Speaker 5: about this country.
Speaker 3: It was this feeling of you feel a reference in
Speaker 3: that inauguration.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's about Obama, but really you feel like that
Speaker 5: really defines our democracy, where it's it's a sense that
Speaker 5: your service to something much bigger than yourself. And so
Speaker 5: in some ways that that kind of shifted from nervousness
Speaker 5: to sort of just the sense of.
Speaker 3: Where the ego goes away. You know, it was just
Speaker 3: kind of like, no, this is for us.
Speaker 5: And and I it's part of the poem already, because
Speaker 5: you know, I always say my poems are smarter than me.
Speaker 3: They're already sort of telling me what I'm going to feel.
Speaker 5: But you know, it's uh, I wrote, I wrote a
Speaker 5: small memoir of it, a memoir, and I call it.
Speaker 3: It's called One Today for all of us.
Speaker 5: Uh uh Now I can't forget One Today for all
Speaker 5: what it is once today, the inaugural Poem's journey. And
Speaker 5: I did that because I had never had this. After
Speaker 5: I'm flying home, it just now it hit me, like,
Speaker 5: what really happened?
Speaker 3: All right? This is huge. I thought I was going.
Speaker 5: To go home and get the nail and walk the dog,
Speaker 5: because you know, nobody reads poetry like I thought my
Speaker 5: life would just go on the way it was.
Speaker 3: But it suddenly hit me, and it was so fast.
Speaker 3: So I get the call on.
Speaker 5: December twelfth, the inaugurations on January twenty first. So it's
Speaker 5: the first time I wrote write a book just out
Speaker 5: of this sheer impulse to write it down, to make
Speaker 5: sure it happened, make sure it happened, and remember it
Speaker 5: because it all seems so quick and was quick. And
Speaker 5: I also thought, for God's sake, the next person that
Speaker 5: becomes a nougurl poet, you know a little bit about
Speaker 5: what to expect. So when I got a chance to
Speaker 5: when Amanda Gorman was chosen, I got a chance to
Speaker 5: speak with her.
Speaker 3: I sent her the book.
Speaker 5: I told her, you know, sort of shared like you know,
Speaker 5: we search compared notes about the call and all that,
Speaker 5: because I mean.
Speaker 3: I never got to talk to my Angelou.
Speaker 5: I talked a little bit to Elizabeth Alexander, which is
Speaker 5: my predecessor. And now there's only there's only three of
Speaker 5: us alive. And like my husband says, more people have
Speaker 5: been to the Moon than I've been President's or nougurl poets.
Speaker 5: It's so it's a feeling that you can't just sort
Speaker 5: of call a friend and say, like, hey, last time
Speaker 5: you read it, but anyway, but yeah, that's when it
Speaker 5: really was like, you know, okay, something shifted, right, and yeah,
Speaker 5: and I just wanted to record that with the written word,
Speaker 5: which is what I do.
Speaker 2: Tell me a bit about too. You know, again, we
Speaker 2: think of that day and you know, obviously, like you
Speaker 2: talked about, it's such a select club of people and
Speaker 2: such amazing people that have been able to do it.
Speaker 2: Tell me you had mentioned earlier you had given kind
Speaker 2: of segue to this next question. You said, basically, I
Speaker 2: mean it was a game changer for you in terms
Speaker 2: of your writing career. I mean for those that are listening.
Speaker 2: You know a lot of people they you know, they
Speaker 2: may not see poetry as viable career wise. Tell us,
Speaker 2: I mean we you know, just out of my own
Speaker 2: curiosity too, tell us what kind of the roller coaster
Speaker 2: were you able to go on in terms of your
Speaker 2: career in poetry after having such a big honor like that.
Speaker 2: What did that look like that you'd be willing to share?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Sure, so you know it's it's arguably, right, the most
Speaker 5: public moment for poetry in the entire country, right, you know,
Speaker 5: sixty million people here at one poem at the same time,
Speaker 5: and it triggers, Uh, it triggers a lot of things
Speaker 5: for people. So so what happened a few things that
Speaker 5: were you know, things that I never knew were possible, right,
Speaker 5: you know, And I think a lot of a lot
Speaker 5: of this might happen if you want a pulitzer or
Speaker 5: something like that, right, And a lot of our careers
Speaker 5: as poets is you.
Speaker 3: Know, hanging in there and having faith.
Speaker 5: That's something beautiful and big will happened at my shift,
Speaker 5: does or not?
Speaker 3: Like that's fine too, Like I wasn't. I was.
Speaker 5: I was a point of my career where I was
Speaker 5: fine where I was. Of course I was dreaming for more.
Speaker 5: But anyway, so first of all, agents called from all
Speaker 5: over the place. That was nuts, like suddenly because I
Speaker 5: had a memoir. I had a drafted memoir about about
Speaker 5: my childhood, about growing up in Miami. So so that
Speaker 5: was like what like interviewing, interviewing, interviewing agents on the phone.
Speaker 3: As soon as I got back off the stage and.
Speaker 5: Back into the Senator's office, they were ready, people calling
Speaker 5: my speaker's agent to book me. So it was like
Speaker 5: what I thought, I was going to walk the dog
Speaker 5: and get the mail and go back to my engineering
Speaker 5: day job right now. So yeah, all sorts of which, again,
Speaker 5: these stories aligned for me because it was not the
Speaker 5: usual suspects. It was people I've read for the USDA,
Speaker 5: the fdi C, all sorts of immigrant advocacy groups, all
Speaker 5: sorts of LGBT groups, all sorts of nonprofits, all sorts
Speaker 5: of I've done corporate events.
Speaker 3: And for me, again being that kid that.
Speaker 5: Didn't have access to the arts, right, for me, that democratization.
Speaker 3: Of poetry, it was so inviting.
Speaker 5: Right, It's kind of like I always thought of myself
Speaker 5: wanting to be a poet of the people, and that
Speaker 5: almost sounds a little pretentious, but what I mean by
Speaker 5: that is, you know, I always thought we should put
Speaker 5: poetry out there and not wait for people to come
Speaker 5: to poetry kind of the work you do, right, Like,
Speaker 5: it's like, let's put it out there, let's not wait
Speaker 5: for people to come. And so that idea of being
Speaker 5: almost like a poet to your evangelist, right, of being
Speaker 5: able to walk into rooms where people have never even
Speaker 5: seen or heard a living poet and be that.
Speaker 3: Person was really special.
Speaker 5: And so but yeah, I spent about ten years of
Speaker 5: my life just being on the road about seventy percent
Speaker 5: of my time, which I never knew that was possible
Speaker 5: as a career. But I fully embraced it because I
Speaker 5: felt like I was doing something good, something good, not
Speaker 5: for poetry itself, right, and for people themselves, not just
Speaker 5: because it's my career.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it was. You know, there's a lot.
Speaker 5: Of venues, you know, these places call you you don't
Speaker 5: call them, right that I never knew anything about. So
Speaker 5: so it was like living the dream in a way, right,
Speaker 5: like just making the flip side to that is that
Speaker 5: kind of that kind of exposure.
Speaker 3: I'm in some ways more afraid to publish now than before,
Speaker 3: right because you're you're out there right, like there's.
Speaker 5: A lot of eyes on you, so uh so in
Speaker 5: a way that so oh yeah, so that's it kind
Speaker 5: of ironic, but uh you know, are people just saying
Speaker 5: yes or do I have just yes? People that are
Speaker 5: accepting poems, but they're not really up to part way
Speaker 5: where it should be.
Speaker 3: And then the other great thing that started happening.
Speaker 5: People started actually me to write more occasional commissioned poems
Speaker 5: and commemorative poems, like a poems for Boston Strong at
Speaker 5: the benefit concert.
Speaker 3: So that was another way.
Speaker 5: Of writing that I never knew, like literally, like they're
Speaker 5: like assignments. Yeah, it's And so having the practice of
Speaker 5: what I learned from writing an occasional poem the one
Speaker 5: today really worked and helped to understand what that really
Speaker 5: means and how does.
Speaker 3: That work and how do you do that? And why
Speaker 3: would you do that? Right?
Speaker 5: So that was another, you know, another another sort of
Speaker 5: another door that opened, and another way of sort not
Speaker 5: only uh, another way of not only putting poetry out there,
Speaker 5: but also of writing poetry myself.
Speaker 3: Another source of kind of inspiration.
Speaker 2: Absolutely and in that same spirit, I mean, you became
Speaker 2: Miami Dade's first poet laurette and the Academy of American
Speaker 2: Poets Education Ambassador. So I mean your Miami Dade County,
Speaker 2: I mean, like you said, that is a bastion of
Speaker 2: culture diversity, and you know, they never had a poet
Speaker 2: lorette before. And you tell us about kind of how
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, and you you strike me as
Speaker 2: a type of person. I mean you just take the opportunities,
Speaker 2: you know, you you almost you create the opportunities really
Speaker 2: for yourself that I really do feel like you strike
Speaker 2: as that type of person. You do want to strike
Speaker 2: the iron, Like you said, you want to be a
Speaker 2: poet of the people. You know, tell us how did
Speaker 2: you come about being Miami Dades first poet Lourette? Was
Speaker 2: that something you just kind of came in conjunction. They
Speaker 2: called you, you called them, or you saw you saw
Speaker 2: space and you said you want to enter that space.
Speaker 3: A little both.
Speaker 5: So, uh, Miami Dad County actually had a poetry ambassador,
Speaker 5: a role which is the mayor loves poetry and she's uh,
Speaker 5: I mean she's a big fan of poetry. And so
Speaker 5: so this person, uh works it's part of the cultural
Speaker 5: when I forget the exact department, but cultural affairs or
Speaker 5: something like that.
Speaker 3: But they have a.
Speaker 5: Poet that a poetry ambassador, and then someone who's also
Speaker 5: a writer obviously, and and.
Speaker 3: We we were calling.
Speaker 5: She was talking to me one day about like the
Speaker 5: possibility of creating the first you know, poet laureateship and said,
Speaker 5: that's a great idea.
Speaker 3: And she asked me for people, and I said, well,
Speaker 3: I have a bunch, but I will do it if
Speaker 3: you want. Why not, right.
Speaker 5: Again, if it's in line with my with my you know,
Speaker 5: sort of my my mission, and it's not not my brand,
Speaker 5: but again putting poetry out there, and so the ability
Speaker 5: anywhere I can, I can be that person, that ambassador,
Speaker 5: that that that that person that brings people poetry, that
Speaker 5: uh that gets to sort of be the messenger of
Speaker 5: having people changed by poetry. So I welcomed that and
Speaker 5: we did. My big project was was something modeled after
Speaker 5: Robert Pinsky's project. It was called My Favorite Poem Project,
Speaker 5: and so we just went around the whole country doing
Speaker 5: different sorry the whole county during different events, but just
Speaker 5: choosing people from firemen to like county commissioners to poets,
Speaker 5: to artists, to politicians to teachers, and just asking them
Speaker 5: to share their favorite poem and the story behind it
Speaker 5: and how it changed their life, and with these wonderful conversations,
Speaker 5: right like.
Speaker 3: So, so that was great, Uh.
Speaker 5: With the with the Academy of American Poets, that's also
Speaker 5: sort of an same thing.
Speaker 3: Once I saw the incredible reaction to.
Speaker 5: That one poem right read, and I thought, what if
Speaker 5: you know, I just thought, you know, how many kids
Speaker 5: they're out there, how many people there are out there
Speaker 5: that in our educational system really thinking about how they.
Speaker 3: Don't get to that exposure to poetry. So I thought,
Speaker 3: I got to change that, or I want to change
Speaker 3: I want to help change that.
Speaker 5: I want a little boy like me to know about
Speaker 5: poetry earlier in life and the arts in general.
Speaker 3: And so I got to talking to the Academy American.
Speaker 5: Poets who serve Who's a big part of who they serve,
Speaker 5: our educators, And I thought, well, I can't do.
Speaker 3: This single handedly.
Speaker 5: But if we team up with educators and give them
Speaker 5: a leg up right and thinking about giving them resources
Speaker 5: and tools to teach poetry and interesting and innovative ways,
Speaker 5: then the numbers, you know, are exponential. You know how
Speaker 5: many hundreds thousands of students run across their classrooms in
Speaker 5: their life time.
Speaker 3: And so that's my role there, And that was sort
Speaker 3: of self created too, because I just.
Speaker 5: Again I wanted to I wanted to poetry, poetry for
Speaker 5: the people, by the people of the people, so to speak.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, and I really again i'd love that. And
Speaker 2: I really do commend you for again really putting poetry
Speaker 2: in a place, especially with your platform that's so kind
Speaker 2: of touchable, it's so reachable. It's very commendable for you
Speaker 2: to be doing that, especially in a place where like
Speaker 2: where you're living Miami, Dad. So I want to move
Speaker 2: on a bit here now. In How to Love a Country,
Speaker 2: First off, that title is already an interesting and interesting title,
Speaker 2: and I would love to kind of find out more
Speaker 2: about how that that title even came about. But in
Speaker 2: How to Love a Country, you write of America's I
Speaker 2: would say, almost painful and beautiful contradictions, right, beauty and
Speaker 2: its brokenness.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: I mean at this point, you know, looking at the
Speaker 2: world we live in today, Richard, I mean, do you
Speaker 2: believe poetry can still heal a nation? Or are we
Speaker 2: at a different phase in life now? What are your thoughts?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Sure?
Speaker 5: So that book was an outgrowth of, again, the same
Speaker 5: question of home, right, but not just what home means
Speaker 5: to me, but what is the larger question of home
Speaker 5: means to us? So a lot of that poetry is
Speaker 5: more the poetry of weed than the poetry of me. Again,
Speaker 5: but with the same question, because you know, traveling around
Speaker 5: and or just the response of tens of thousands of
Speaker 5: emails of people saying they finally felt like part of America.
Speaker 3: Anyway, but again being on the road, right, what can
Speaker 3: a poem do in the world? Right?
Speaker 5: How can a poem participate in some kind of civic discord.
Speaker 5: What does a poem do? And so that book was
Speaker 5: really different for me in that sense, I dare to
Speaker 5: sort of step way outside my comfort zone in terms
Speaker 5: of just my sort more autobiographical foundations.
Speaker 3: Right so, so U.
Speaker 5: So that I wanted, I wanted us all to look
Speaker 5: at that.
Speaker 3: That, like you said, was where do you use that? Something?
Speaker 3: Horrible beauty? What was the I mean beauty and it's beauty.
Speaker 2: Painful contradiction, but a beautiful one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and uh and I think that you know, you
Speaker 5: could almost put a question mark behind that title.
Speaker 3: It's like, how how do you how to love a country?
Speaker 3: Question mark? What does that even mean? What? How do
Speaker 3: we love it?
Speaker 5: I think that that broken beauty comes from two things.
Speaker 5: One is, as I like to say, my my parents
Speaker 5: are more American than I could ever be, or more
Speaker 5: patriotic at least, and because of the leap of faith
Speaker 5: and the sacrifices they made, the quintessential belief in the
Speaker 5: American American dream and the values, uh, the traditional values
Speaker 5: and the whole you know, the whole.
Speaker 3: Promises of this country which we take for granted.
Speaker 5: Right So, but they've always instilled in me a sense
Speaker 5: of optimism that no matter how bad things are, there's
Speaker 5: always something good to look at, right, and also their
Speaker 5: own countries, right, but that yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 5: broken stuff that we also have to look up.
Speaker 3: But I think, you know, to say that I know
Speaker 3: where and where we are now that book was.
Speaker 5: Published in before the twenty sixteen election, and that we
Speaker 5: were already a bit broken, right yeah, And like you say,
Speaker 5: where we are now is like, so that's the question,
Speaker 5: and it's social sort of maybe what I'm going to
Speaker 5: be writing around around next You know, I don't to
Speaker 5: be honest with you, and I don't I don't like
Speaker 5: saying that you know that anything really changes the world
Speaker 5: per se like boom like. But what I always do
Speaker 5: believe is that you know, art, a poem can change
Speaker 5: a person, and a person can change the world. And
Speaker 5: what's weird what we do is artists, right, It's like
Speaker 5: we never see the ripple effects of what we do.
Speaker 5: You know, who knows if little Barack Obama read up
Speaker 5: Home by Maya Angelou or you know, by Gwendolen Broke
Speaker 5: and said I'm going to change the world. We do
Speaker 5: what we do, right, but we we we also do
Speaker 5: it in a in a in acquired way. So I
Speaker 5: think I think that is the role of poetry, at
Speaker 5: least that's what I wanted to do in that book,
Speaker 5: you know, because as artist, as poets, we're asking questions
Speaker 5: hopefully that aren't being asked.
Speaker 3: We're not just stating the obvious. Sometimes we need to
Speaker 3: state the obvious.
Speaker 5: But it's also art should give us a way out
Speaker 5: or or some some way, not a way out, but another.
Speaker 3: Possibility right that we be looking at.
Speaker 5: I think art also humanizes these issues that get abstracted
Speaker 5: by the news and by social media.
Speaker 3: Right when you when when you when you write.
Speaker 5: Poetry of witness, when you create, when you write a
Speaker 5: poem about a real person, there's a real faith, there's
Speaker 5: real names, there's real tears, there's real.
Speaker 3: Smiles, there's real all that, right, it becomes a real thing.
Speaker 3: So so I don't quite no.
Speaker 5: I think I've been talking to a lot of my friends,
Speaker 5: as I'm sure you have to, and and we're we're
Speaker 5: we're like, what is the role of poetry right now?
Speaker 3: What can we do?
Speaker 5: And part of what we're feeling too is that right now,
Speaker 5: joy and beauty are radical as well, and that can
Speaker 5: also change things, right if we can start looking at
Speaker 5: the beauty, and by that I don't necessarily mean oh,
Speaker 5: a rose or something like that.
Speaker 3: But again, what are we not looking at? Where is there.
Speaker 5: Something that can help help these help these divide I
Speaker 5: wouldn't say heal these divides, but let's get people talking
Speaker 5: in some ways. And again it's quiet work, right, but
Speaker 5: there's a lot of us. But I think it's really
Speaker 5: interesting the.
Speaker 3: Role of poetry becomes more and more important.
Speaker 5: And you've seen that in our country as things become
Speaker 5: more politically complex, as they are in Latin American countries
Speaker 5: and in oppressed countries right where the poets and it's
Speaker 5: not even that they're writing political poems, it's just the
Speaker 5: fact that they dare to hope and dream, they dare
Speaker 5: to say something that.
Speaker 3: Nobody is saying.
Speaker 5: And that's why you get you know, poets jailed in
Speaker 5: all these countries, unfortunately.
Speaker 3: But you know that that's that's where I feel we're
Speaker 3: in starting to be in this moment.
Speaker 5: This is why we also have right, you've even seen
Speaker 5: the poets that have originated from spoken word, who has
Speaker 5: always carried a different not a different kind of torch,
Speaker 5: but a much brighter torch in terms of social political issues.
Speaker 3: How they have become.
Speaker 5: More a part of the forefront right now you have
Speaker 5: poets like Patricia Smith or teachers at Princeton, right, that
Speaker 5: sense of the collective voice, the voice that sort of
Speaker 5: that sort of is about we, and and dares the
Speaker 5: question that we has been coming more and more important.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I think everybody, every art and every discipline
Speaker 5: has to do their own their own part. But again,
Speaker 5: the work is quieter, or we don't always see it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 5: the ripple takes a while, man.
Speaker 2: So it's it's it's interesting Richard with you, I mean,
Speaker 2: and you kind of answered this question a bit there
Speaker 2: is you do see a balance of the art with
Speaker 2: the activism or even in some ways from which while
Speaker 2: I'm hearing you say, you almost see them intertwined into one. Right,
Speaker 2: even said our joy is our resistance. That is a
Speaker 2: form of revolution in itself. Just writing about the beauty,
Speaker 2: I mean for you, I mean, how do you? Because
Speaker 2: I do feel reading your work there is a very deep,
Speaker 2: deep tenderness. There's a deep consideration for for something, a
Speaker 2: nurturing for something. How do you, I mean, when you're
Speaker 2: confronting is you know, issues with history, pain, you write
Speaker 2: poems for marriage equality, reopening the US embassy in Cuba, tragedy,
Speaker 2: there's triumph. How do you kind of keep your tenderness right?
Speaker 2: How do you keep that beauty still as a thread
Speaker 2: in your work? I mean where do you locate that?
Speaker 2: For you?
Speaker 4: I mean where where do you find that within yourself?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think it comes down to empathy. And empathy
Speaker 3: is such.
Speaker 5: A weird word in English because it's so close to sympathy, right,
Speaker 5: but it is real. Empathy is has a different kind
Speaker 5: of connotation. It's really about really stepping outside of yourself, right.
Speaker 5: But also where does that come from?
Speaker 3: For me? I think it.
Speaker 5: Comes from Uh maybe perhaps the empathy I wish I
Speaker 5: would have had, right so as an immigrant, as a gay,
Speaker 5: as a gay man, as as a gay man with
Speaker 5: my grandmother who was also verbally abusive. You know, I
Speaker 5: always think, I guess I side with kind of the underdog,
Speaker 5: and I think what I want to give them instead
Speaker 5: of telling them you're the underdog or this is wrong
Speaker 5: or right?
Speaker 3: How can I uplift everyone? Right?
Speaker 5: Like, how can I how can I open open up,
Speaker 5: open up new ways of looking at but also You're right,
Speaker 5: there's a it's always I think with love somehow with empathy,
Speaker 5: because I think it's just a real deep belief in me.
Speaker 5: You know, as a cliche goes, you can catch more
Speaker 5: flies with honey than with vinegar, and I kind of
Speaker 5: or to quote Michael Jackson, and I'm a lover, not
Speaker 5: a fighter, right, you know, art, I think art for me,
Speaker 5: and I think there's.
Speaker 3: Many ways of handling that, right.
Speaker 5: Different poets handle it different ways, which can be just
Speaker 5: as effective. But for me, it's very much ingrained in
Speaker 5: that always feeling like like that other, and therefore the
Speaker 5: empathy that I'm just about putting out their empathy right
Speaker 5: and lifting people up.
Speaker 3: And saying Jane Hirshfield, I think it was Jane.
Speaker 5: Hersfield and might be misquoting this because it's one of
Speaker 5: those things you hear at a cocktail party or something,
Speaker 5: but she said, poetry is simply a hand reaching out
Speaker 5: and saying me too.
Speaker 3: And I've never forgotten that, right, It's a hand that
Speaker 3: it says me too, and then me too.
Speaker 5: Is not just the people you're you know, it's not
Speaker 5: just my LGBTQ family, It's not just my immigrant family.
Speaker 5: It's all of us have felt pain, we've all felt displaced,
Speaker 5: we've all felt lost, right, we've all felt joy, we've
Speaker 5: all felt ecstasy and desire, and so it's just yeah,
Speaker 5: me too, here's the poem, Me too, And so so
Speaker 5: that's part of what And you're right. I've learned from
Speaker 5: a lot of times from writing occasional or commissioned poems
Speaker 5: that I think the tenderness that you feel coming through,
Speaker 5: even when it can be something like a poem for
Speaker 5: Boston Strong, which is something I didn't experience directly, you know,
Speaker 5: something that was written for the people of Boston.
Speaker 3: I think what you're sensing there is that this is
Speaker 3: a big lesson in terms of craft that I realized.
Speaker 5: An occasional poem isn't really just about the occasion, but
Speaker 5: it's about what one feels about the occasion. In other words,
Speaker 5: like a poem, Like every poem, a poem's poets feelings
Speaker 5: have to really sort of guide the poem and inform
Speaker 5: the poem. And that's the tenderness I think you feel.
Speaker 5: And for me, just to give you that example of
Speaker 5: Boston Trunk, my heart was really broken by the little
Speaker 5: boy Martin that that that past that died and that
Speaker 5: was my emotional way into that poem and saying, you know,
Speaker 5: I have an emotional authority to write this. Now I
Speaker 5: can write with honesty and with real feeling, and so.
Speaker 3: Again, even that poem.
Speaker 5: Is sort of a poem of empathy for the people
Speaker 5: of Boston and victims and the survivors. So yeah, I
Speaker 5: always try to find that that way. That's my way
Speaker 5: into poetry a lot.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Oh, I love that. I love the individual that
Speaker 2: you quoted right there. Poetry is about you give someone
Speaker 2: a poem. It's them just telling you me too, and
Speaker 2: you reading it, you're saying you know what, me too.
Speaker 2: So I love that and I love that that stayed
Speaker 2: with you, and I think that'll stay with the folks
Speaker 2: that are listening. So thanks so much for that. Now,
Speaker 2: moving quite along here, Yeah, you have your memoir, The
Speaker 2: Prince of Love called. I said that it correctly said that,
Speaker 2: please correct me. But it's being developed for television. My goodness. Congratulations. Now,
Speaker 2: I mean, what is that like? I mean is that?
Speaker 2: I mean you've already had so many I've made it moments.
Speaker 2: Is that another one? Just to kind of keep keep
Speaker 2: sticking that nail in that wall? I mean that is
Speaker 2: that is huge and that's so amazing. I mean, what's
Speaker 2: it like to really see your life translated into a
Speaker 2: whole new media I'm a TV show and really tell
Speaker 2: us about how that process began and what that's gonna
Speaker 2: what that's going to transform into. Uh as we look
Speaker 2: forward to seeing that on television.
Speaker 5: Sure, Sure, And I should warn people though, I mean development,
Speaker 5: there's still one big hurdle after that, which is the
Speaker 5: studio that actually buys the you know, now we're working
Speaker 5: on it right, but still even get to development, and
Speaker 5: it's a big deal. So I'm not I'm not downplaying that,
Speaker 5: but it's still there's still that one b card.
Speaker 3: So again, you were saying, like how many times I
Speaker 3: go after things or not?
Speaker 5: So I happened to be I was a speaker at
Speaker 5: the Aspen Ideas Festival, and I met Michael Eisner, who
Speaker 5: is the former CEO of Disney World, and and I
Speaker 5: was just like, I didn't even know he had like
Speaker 5: a company now that options books and whatnot. But I
Speaker 5: was just I told him, im, I guess how many
Speaker 5: times I've been in Disney World.
Speaker 3: He's like coming in like fifty eight times near in Miami.
Speaker 3: That's what you do.
Speaker 5: Anyway, we got to talking about just that that it
Speaker 5: was just a very for me. It was just very
Speaker 5: uncarafter Michael. I mean, I do care that you're Michael Wiser,
Speaker 5: but I was just really wanted to connect with him,
Speaker 5: like we're the same love I have for this place.
Speaker 5: And so it turned out he had this option company
Speaker 5: and the optioned the book, and so we've been He's
Speaker 5: also made made a co writer because he it'd be
Speaker 5: smart enough. I think that he said, you know, it's
Speaker 5: such a particular and unique and important story that we
Speaker 5: don't want someone else to like.
Speaker 3: Be met messing it up that are really getting the
Speaker 3: nuances of it. So he's very aware of that.
Speaker 5: So I have I'm working with someone who has knows
Speaker 5: more of the mechanics of like what works, because I don't.
Speaker 5: I've never written for television. What's been What's been great?
Speaker 5: There's It is a big dream come true for me,
Speaker 5: and in the sense that I'm kind of a TV
Speaker 5: holic again for reasons we were talking about earlier. TV
Speaker 5: was my window into this country that I thought that
Speaker 5: I wanted to belong to, like the whole you know,
Speaker 5: I dream of Genie.
Speaker 3: So I always wanted.
Speaker 5: To see what it's always been a dream to have.
Speaker 5: Like what when I wrote the book, I almost wrote
Speaker 5: it episodically because I was like, I hope this is
Speaker 5: a TV show someday, because I could see the whole
Speaker 5: Blanco family.
Speaker 3: So so that's just exciting in and of itself.
Speaker 5: What it's really weird, not weird, but what's different of course,
Speaker 5: which is kind of like a little like playwriting, although
Speaker 5: you have more tricks when you do TV because you
Speaker 5: have lighting and sound.
Speaker 3: And all these other things going on. You know, it's
Speaker 3: and you can cut it, edit, you know, all this
Speaker 3: other stuff.
Speaker 5: But was you know, as opposed to writing poetry or
Speaker 5: even a memoir where you're really detailing things and scenes
Speaker 5: and the furniture in the room, and you know, it's
Speaker 5: really mostly about dialogue and plot and sort of learning
Speaker 5: how to pull back from that and letting you know.
Speaker 3: If you've ever read a script, like even for something
Speaker 3: like Seinfeld, it's not even that funny.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's the magic of the how, what what the
Speaker 5: what the actors bring to it. How it's all on
Speaker 5: folds on that say so. So it's also been a
Speaker 5: process of trusting and letting go as a writer, I
Speaker 5: have to you know, you know, the club has to
Speaker 5: be this color or like that's not exactly the right
Speaker 5: food for the scene like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's I mean, but what an exciting process.
Speaker 2: I mean, I know, like you said, you know you're
Speaker 2: still waiting for that studio, but I mean to even
Speaker 2: be in development, I mean, and that that kind of
Speaker 2: already that hookup with Michael Eisner. I mean, I think
Speaker 2: you're I think you're good as golden honestly, Richard, I
Speaker 2: don't think you're going to really have much of a
Speaker 2: problem with him back in you what is.
Speaker 5: Such a champion too, and we're talking about how people
Speaker 5: feel things, you know, so he's like he loves the
Speaker 5: story because he's like this Jewish kid that grew up
Speaker 5: you know, Brooklyn and completely feeling.
Speaker 3: Like the other.
Speaker 5: So you know, so that's the hand too, Like he
Speaker 5: just adores the story and like, what would a Cuban
Speaker 5: and a Jewish comment, Well, it's it's still diaspora in
Speaker 5: a way, right, and not in a way it is right.
Speaker 2: Tell me kind of, I mean, and you know again
Speaker 2: you hear kind of these you know, these moments that
Speaker 2: you have and I'm sure when you look back on
Speaker 2: just how opportunities have came about for you. I'm sure
Speaker 2: it's been a collection of smaller moments where you didn't
Speaker 2: even come into a thinking that. I mean, if you
Speaker 2: could even speak to people that are listening to this,
Speaker 2: the are novice poets, you know, they could only dream
Speaker 2: of a career like yours, Richard, I mean, but what
Speaker 2: would you say to them, though? You know, what would
Speaker 2: you say to them in terms of expansion, maybe of
Speaker 2: poetry looking outside the box? Then maybe the rigid way
Speaker 2: in which academia schooling has taught us that writing specifically
Speaker 2: poetry can box us into what would you say to
Speaker 2: people that want to really see their career flourish and
Speaker 2: didn't don't really have maybe the open mind, but are
Speaker 2: looking for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, I think this applies the most everything.
Speaker 5: You obviously have to show up, and you have to
Speaker 5: do the work right and try to constantly honing your
Speaker 5: skills right and forgetting accolades because you know, you got
Speaker 5: to get back to that.
Speaker 3: It's just you and the poem, right, It's just.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the I guess it depends on what stage you
Speaker 5: are a lot of my undergraduates get a little ahead
Speaker 5: of themselves, and they're like.
Speaker 3: We want to publish them like this.
Speaker 5: Your job right now is to learn how to write
Speaker 5: the best poem you can write, and there'll be time
Speaker 5: to publish. Don't worry about that right now. I mean,
Speaker 5: you have to share your work if you want, put
Speaker 5: it on Instagram if you want. But don't feel like
Speaker 5: it's a vocation not a career right now. Right Well,
Speaker 5: it's always a vocation at some points, right So, I.
Speaker 3: Guess it depends where you are. But I guess I'll
Speaker 3: tell you what I've done. You know, you just you
Speaker 3: just you just stick it. You just have to show up.
Speaker 5: I mean, I can't explain it the way I would
Speaker 5: say that, you know, when we have other things in
Speaker 5: our lives, even my engineering, right I gave up promotions.
Speaker 3: At some point.
Speaker 5: I told my boss I only want to work thirty
Speaker 5: hours a week. I want to get benefits. And because
Speaker 5: they already knew I was a writer and I was
Speaker 5: out of my first book.
Speaker 3: But I guess that's what I want to say. It's
Speaker 3: there's a danger in losing.
Speaker 5: Sight of of that dream, right and then just not
Speaker 5: writing or just so and not participating in that world anymore,
Speaker 5: and so I always say, set up your life to
Speaker 5: sort of feed feed that part of you, right, if
Speaker 5: you're serious about it, because because most of us will
Speaker 5: have to do something else, right, unless we're trust fund
Speaker 5: babies and are just living off whatever the trust right,
Speaker 5: we're going to have to find some other kind of
Speaker 5: lively you know, not only that it's healthy to have
Speaker 5: something else sometimes too, that can you know. So so
Speaker 5: I would say to always, you know, again, show up
Speaker 5: the other little tidbit of advice. I would say, it's
Speaker 5: very hard to be in that space about career expansion
Speaker 5: and all that stuff and be in the creative space
Speaker 5: at the same time, and so you should try to
Speaker 5: compartment compartmentalize those Like, first of all, you need to
Speaker 5: have work right to be get anywhere. Right, You're not
Speaker 5: going to get anywhere without good work. That's or in
Speaker 5: good work. I mean, you know that's relative too, right,
Speaker 5: that always that's subjective. But so what I try to
Speaker 5: do is your moments of or not moments or really
Speaker 5: periods of intense creativity and then create something. Usually it's
Speaker 5: a book. And then I just switched to complete marketing.
Speaker 5: You know, give me a reading, let me do this right,
Speaker 5: Like it's time to hit the road, it's time to
Speaker 5: send to review urgs.
Speaker 3: It's time and.
Speaker 5: That's another part of our job, right, But it's hard
Speaker 5: to do those at the same time.
Speaker 3: Because you're you're kind of you know that other stuff.
Speaker 5: You're always you're putting yourself out there in a different way.
Speaker 5: That's kind of is important, but it's also not the
Speaker 5: same thing as you know, putting yourself out in your
Speaker 5: own work, right, the chances you're taking with you sitting
Speaker 5: at the desk, which that's important. So I like to
Speaker 5: compartmentalize those things, and I think you know that's part
Speaker 5: of that's part of how you you know, you keep
Speaker 5: on moving forward and again put you know, there's moments
Speaker 5: to be out there and active. We pursue stuff that's
Speaker 5: going to help your I'm going to use the word
Speaker 5: vocation instead of career because I think that's really what
Speaker 5: it is. And then those opportunities start happening and multiplying
Speaker 5: because the other the other thing is also I always
Speaker 5: tell you know, being part of community of writers, that's important, right,
Speaker 5: like just being in community, going to poetry readings, going
Speaker 5: to if you have an opportunity to teach a workshop,
Speaker 5: let's say at a at a community center, being part
Speaker 5: of poetry in some other way too, that that's part
Speaker 5: of our what makes us energetically feel like keeps on
Speaker 5: lifting us up, keeps us.
Speaker 3: Feeling like we are writers that we are. Also there's other.
Speaker 5: People in our same shoes too, So so yeah, I would,
Speaker 5: And I guess you know, the bottom line is you
Speaker 5: got to remain true to your voice. And that's that
Speaker 5: that covers a lot of ground. But there is a
Speaker 5: lot of intimidation out there to write like so and so,
Speaker 5: or do this like so and so. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 5: find find I mean, I'm not saying, you know, find
Speaker 5: finding our voice.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't want to excuse poetry that's not
Speaker 3: you know, that's my voice. That's not what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: If the boy, if the poem is you know, not
Speaker 5: where it should be, or the poetry is in Britschard,
Speaker 5: but it's really being authentic to your voice. And I
Speaker 5: think there's a lot of danger in that when we
Speaker 5: start thinking about MFA programs, when we saw start writing
Speaker 5: like each other. So always keep that in mind and
Speaker 5: find something that you really really care an obsession, what
Speaker 5: is home, something that is really a deep part of
Speaker 5: your big question in life, and let let every poem
Speaker 5: sort of start from there, and the rest will come.
Speaker 2: I think absolutely the rest is still unwritten. We love it,
Speaker 2: we love it, we love it.
Speaker 3: All right, well, right, you know exactly.
Speaker 4: Exactly exactly, shout out Natasha Beddingfield.
Speaker 3: There we go.
Speaker 2: Now, all right, Richard, Now you've said, there's a quote
Speaker 2: that you've said, you said, great art keeps asking questions. Now,
Speaker 2: if you could leave us all with one question that
Speaker 2: we want to keep asking about home, about love, about life,
Speaker 2: or about America, what would it be?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I think it's it's we've been sort of circling around it,
Speaker 5: I think, because I think, you know, the questions I
Speaker 5: have in my head are also thinking like what am
Speaker 5: I going to be writing about next? And how and
Speaker 5: why and how that's going to happen. But I've been thinking,
Speaker 5: and I think it started with how to love a country?
Speaker 5: The question on my mind. Of course, Okay, we can say,
Speaker 5: you know, I you know, I have almost you know,
Speaker 5: an epigenetic trauma of exile because of my mother being pregnantly.
Speaker 5: I'm really scared about what's happening right now right in
Speaker 5: our country. I mean there are days when I'm like,
Speaker 5: am I gonna have to do like my mom and
Speaker 5: like leave and like.
Speaker 3: Start a holy life somewhere else, literally because there's no
Speaker 3: other choice.
Speaker 5: So so the question that I'm asking how much can
Speaker 5: I do?
Speaker 3: What should I be doing? Is it just poetry? Right?
Speaker 5: Because the pen is mightier than the sword, but the
Speaker 5: sword's out there, you know, So I'm trying to see what.
Speaker 3: Is that space? How?
Speaker 5: Yeah, like what should poetry be doing in the world
Speaker 5: right now? For me and for us all, but also
Speaker 5: beyond the sort of very sort of patu sort of
Speaker 5: let's heald the divide kind of thing.
Speaker 3: And maybe this has something to do with empathy.
Speaker 5: But I'm feeling like there's this shifting momentum in some
Speaker 5: weird way that this country is still our country is
Speaker 5: still very much stuck on this idea of independence.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: We haven't shaken that off for good reason, right, Like
Speaker 5: that's we broke away from whatever. But really, if we're
Speaker 5: going to survive, it's really about how do we shift
Speaker 5: that thinking to interdependence?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 5: Like that really that's the next highest level of thinking.
Speaker 5: And I'm thinking that that's that's kind of what I started.
Speaker 5: I think hope to show, hope to show in the
Speaker 5: inaugural poem that whether you know it or not, we're
Speaker 5: all connected, right, and all this survival really belongs on
Speaker 5: up with all of us are a cog, you know,
Speaker 5: a gear and this and this thing called life. We
Speaker 5: kind of learned that in the pandemic, but soon forgot it, right, So,
Speaker 5: uh so that's the question. It's really a question of
Speaker 5: how what what is interdependence? How do we get there? Like,
Speaker 5: what does that look like? And it's just it's yes,
Speaker 5: it's our country, but that's a big word.
Speaker 3: It's also our communities. It's also our family, all the.
Speaker 5: Divides that are big and small out there, and and
Speaker 5: how do we how do we use language to some degree?
Speaker 5: And that comes from that space.
Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely, I love that as the one question he
Speaker 2: would leave us to keep on asking, all right, Richard,
Speaker 2: our last question of the interview of the day of
Speaker 2: the night you ask every poet on the poet Speaks podcast, Richard,
Speaker 2: why do you need to get your words out?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 5: I don't know out, but there might be two sides
Speaker 5: of the same question, two sides of the same coin, right, So,
Speaker 5: and I always tell my students.
Speaker 3: This which they kind of freak out a bit.
Speaker 5: I tell I'm writing a poem is the stupidest, most arrogant,
Speaker 5: self serving, dumbest thing you can do in the world.
Speaker 5: And then I also felt it's also the most generous, selfish,
Speaker 5: self less, gregarious, honest, most beautiful thing you can do
Speaker 5: in the world. And I perceived to explain that, you know,
Speaker 5: when a poem first begins in us, we have to
Speaker 5: come with all the blood, sweat and tears. We have
Speaker 5: to come with all you know, everything that is not
Speaker 5: why bother. You know, we have to believe that our
Speaker 5: lives need need art right, and I need.
Speaker 3: To make art out of this why to understand it?
Speaker 5: Every time I finish a poem or almost finished a poem,
Speaker 5: I feel like I learned something new about myself, about
Speaker 5: my world, about people in my life, about a memory
Speaker 5: that I've had for thirty years haunting me, about a
Speaker 5: current event, about politics.
Speaker 3: And I think when I discover that for myself, this is.
Speaker 5: How it turns from something selfish into something selfless, because
Speaker 5: then that discovery is there again the hand that says
Speaker 5: me too, And then your poem is a gift in
Speaker 5: the world.
Speaker 3: And that's why I want. That's why that's why I
Speaker 3: write my poems, and that's why I.
Speaker 5: Want them out there, is for those stories that come
Speaker 5: back to you that say that poem made me think
Speaker 5: of when blank blank blank, that poem I'd never thought
Speaker 5: about this, but that poem shifted to something in me,
Speaker 5: that poem, because what they're seeing is what happened to me.
Speaker 5: In some ways, they're seeing it in their own lives
Speaker 5: and maybe a different context.
Speaker 3: And so that's why I want it out.
Speaker 5: There, because it does no good just sitting on my
Speaker 5: my notebooks are on my desk or in my computer.
Speaker 4: It does no good just sitting there. It has to
Speaker 4: be on the world.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, Richard, thank you so much. We really
Speaker 2: appreciate you being on a podcast today. Before we wrap up,
Speaker 2: wrap up, please do I mean tell us what is
Speaker 2: the rest of twenty twenty five looking like for you?
Speaker 2: Any events you want to tell us about, and please
Speaker 2: do drop below tell us links social media websites where
Speaker 2: we can check out all of your amazing work.
Speaker 5: So right now I'm teaching two classes, which keeps me
Speaker 5: kind of busy just doing you know, some gigs here
Speaker 5: and there. I have something very exciting that it just
Speaker 5: started two weeks ago. So I am starting to do
Speaker 5: through my website, online online courses, book consultations, portfolio consultations,
Speaker 5: just trying something new. There's a free one coming up
Speaker 5: on November twentieth, which is just called It's just a
Speaker 5: forum again free of charge. And so you think you're
Speaker 5: not a popet, that's the name, and it's just I
Speaker 5: want to share my story about like we talked about
Speaker 5: like because for a while, I just I also had
Speaker 5: sort of this imposter syndrome, right, how can I be
Speaker 5: an engineer and a poet?
Speaker 3: Until everything started really gelling together for me?
Speaker 5: And so I want to share that story, and I
Speaker 5: want others to share their stories about and again sort
Speaker 5: of how do we make our way through our vocations
Speaker 5: while we have to do have other jobs, some of
Speaker 5: which we love, some of which we might not love.
Speaker 3: So just opening up that conversation so uh so that
Speaker 3: I'm really excited about that venture. I've I have.
Speaker 5: Yet to start writing again for my last book because
Speaker 5: I'm that kind of writer. I told you I shift
Speaker 5: gears and I'm like all in, like you know, out there,
Speaker 5: out there mode. So uh that's the that's the question
Speaker 5: that I'm asking everyone, and then I'm asking myself. That's
Speaker 5: probably gonna be what the next book is. Other than that,
Speaker 5: uh yeah, just to usually can always check out my
Speaker 5: website w w W w w W Richard Blanco dot
Speaker 5: com with iphen and all my events are let's there
Speaker 5: as well as latest news. Also, you know, I love
Speaker 5: using social media, not just for me, but really to
Speaker 5: uplift other poets, uplift poetry in general. So there's things
Speaker 5: out there and it quotes, book recommendations, these kinds of
Speaker 5: things that hopefully you can get turned on to.
Speaker 3: If you were to kill me.
Speaker 5: I don't know my text, my handles, but Richard Blanco poet.
Speaker 5: And then one is poet Richard Blanco mostly mostly Instagram
Speaker 5: and Facebook, but that there's not that too many Richard
Speaker 5: Blancos out there. The only other one is a real
Speaker 5: estate agent and a soccer player, so you'll.
Speaker 2: Know if you're in the wrong until three Yeah, different people,
Speaker 2: So all right, perfect, perfect, Well, thank you again so much, Richard.
Speaker 3: Everyone.
Speaker 4: Richard's links will be down below in the description box
Speaker 4: no matter where you're listening to this amazing podcast. Again,
Speaker 4: all right, thank you so much for being on the
Speaker 4: podcast today.
Speaker 3: Richard thank you, and thank you Amanda for all you're
Speaker 3: doing and all you do. We're all into the same team.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, absolutely again everyone.
Speaker 2: Richard's links will be down below no matter where you're
Speaker 2: listening to his podcast again.
Speaker 4: This is the Pold Speaks podcast. We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 4: Alive one