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“I think we’re finally Americanos,” Richard Blanco, Cuban immigrant poet, leaned over and whispered to his mother that cold January day in Washington, DC in 2013 when Barack Obama was sworn in to his second term as President of the United States. Blanco, only the fifth inauguration poet since Robert Frost during the Kennedy presidency, was the first immigrant, the first openly gay, and the youngest poet ever to read before a televised audience of 21.6 million viewers and more than a million Obama supporters present on the Washington Mall. Once known in Miami, Florida as the Poet Engineer, Blanco began his career as a civil engineer. Like many working class kids from immigrant families, Blanco was encouraged to graduate from Florida International University in engineering in 1991 and “get a good job.” He came relatively late to poetry, began writing at age twenty-five, and graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing in 1997 from his alma mater at age twenty-nine. However, since that very public reading of his universal poem, “One Today,” Blanco feels he’s come to a fork in the road and that he will be writing for the rest of his life. Now forty-eight, Blanco was appointed by the Academy of American Poets as the first-ever Education Ambassador and meets with teachers, “turning people on to poetry.”

In fact, in 2015, his poem, “One Today”, was made into an illustrated children’s book. “We didn’t change a word,” he said. In this poem, Blanco so eloquently lays out the American dream: “One sun rose on us today “One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story/ “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…”

Richard Blanco, winner of the 2013 Paterson Poetry Prize and the Thom Gunn Award for Poetry for his collection, Looking for the Gulf Motel, and the 2015 Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Memoir, The Prince of los Cocuyos, has, by the very “act of being who I am,” created a positive impression of gay people to the American public. Maybe because of his deriding, homophobic, and xenophobic grandmother, maybe because he knew he was different early on, Blanco felt, as many gay children feel, out of the mainstream, reserved, and always watching the world. Perhaps, ironically, his abuela’s constant surveillance and verbal outbursts made Blanco more introverted, an observer of the world who learned how to read people emotionally. In essence, perhaps it made him the poet and writer he is today.

“One Today” Inaugural poem presented to President Barack Obama.

Photo by Pete Souza

He is an award-winning author of several books of poetry, essays and memoir, including: Cosas del Mar, One Today, Looking for the Gulf Motel, Directions to the Beach of the Dead, City of a Hundred Fires (named after his parents’ hometown of Cienfuegos, Cuba), Nowhere but Here, Boston Strong: The Poem; the book, For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey and the memoir, The Prince of los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood. Blanco played a pivotal role in the quest for marriage equality with his poem, “Until We Could,” commissioned by FreedomtoMarry.org, where he so eloquently says, “until the gavel struck into law what we always knew, the right to say I DO.”

Blanco displays remarkable empathy and understanding of women. In his poem, “The House of the Virgin Mary,” he compares the Mother of God to his mother: “It is difficult/to imagine the mother of a savior living/in such a simple house of hewn stones “How many nights/did she lie in bed staring at the threads/of the window shears in the moonlight, /praying the rosary, mother to mother, /woman to woman, waiting for a miracle, /or giving thanks forever and ever amen?” Blanco recounts that his mother left her mother, every aunt and uncle, eight brothers and sisters, her nephews and nieces in Cuba to emigrate to the US. Richard and his brother grew up feeling that incredible loss and longing, the sense of the sacrifice his mother made to give him and his brother a better life—many, many poems are about her.

Today, Blanco divides his time between Bethel, Maine, and Concord, Massachusetts. He moved to Maine with his partner, Mark Neveu, a research scientist and avid “snow bunny.” Being with someone outside his culture is odd and wonderful. Plumbing the unknown and discovering oneself in the other is amazing. The small ski town in Maine, miles away from his Cuban Miami upbringing, is conducive to writing. But, “you can’t write poetry eight hours a day—you’d go insane!” Blanco has involved himself in the planning board in Bethel in an effort to create a sense of belonging, translating “the emotional landscape of community into the physical landscape of community.”

In the three years since the 2013 inauguration, Blanco has seen little of his adopted hometown. In fact, he’s been traveling almost nonstop since his public poetry reading at the second Obama inauguration, bringing poetry to medical staff at the Mayo Clinic, accountants at the Federal Reserve, and engineers at government and engineering firms. His good friend, Sandra Cisneros, Mexican-American author of the memoir, House on Mango Street, gave him the courage to tell his own story. It was one of the first memoirs he read in high school that told the story of an immigrant growing up in an extended family in a mainstream American city. Blanco and Cisneros presented together at an event in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, in the summer of 2015, and renewed their deeply abiding friendship, nurtured over the years—allies in the lexicon of Latino literature.

Richard Blanco (R) and partner of 15 years,

Dr. Mark Neveu, on Glacier Hike in Iceland.

Photo by Pete Souza

His favorite poet is Elizabeth Bishop. He was surprised to find himself in someone he didn’t expect—not just who, but what and how she writes: complex, telling a story through rich imagery. Though a woman born in Worchester, MA, in a way she was an exile all her life, living in Canada, Brazil, and America. “I think I feel like an exile every day of my life. Many different layers—exile from myself, being who I am, separate from family. The world is becoming more fluid. Living in different cultures is the underlying universal story of me and my parents—exile. I’ve moved a lot. I feel very much like an immigrant – different foods, regional history, community. I’m always engaged in that space of the mind that seeks out the sense of home and identity,” Blanco explained.

Blanco sees poetry as the bridge between people because, “no matter what culture we’re from, we’re all operating from the same set of core human emotional denominators— love, hate, betrayal, loss, grief, hurt, anger, redemption and reconciliation.”

In fact, Blanco was commissioned to write a poem for the re-opening of the US Embassy in Cuba in August of 2015. He wrote a poem, entitled, “Cosas Del Mar” (Matters of the Sea): “The sea doesn’t matter what matters is this: that we all belong to the sea between us “No one is other to the other to the sea.” This poem begins to heal the rift bigger than the ninety miles of sea that separates Havana from Miami ever since the US severed diplomatic relations with Castro’s Cuba in 1961.

Blanco crosses boundaries in his fundamental human drive for home, belonging, and becoming. Many have told him, including his Polish-German partner, Mark Neveu, of fifteen years, that the abuela in his memoir reminds them of their own grandmothers, their own families. It is this common humanity that enables Blanco to at least try to tap into something larger. “What is West Side Story if not Romeo and Juliet told all over again? Human motives and emotions represent the same universal element that we all share.”

Richard Blanco and Carole King at Boston Strong Event.

Photo by Alissa Hessler

Blanco understands the practical constraints that everyone has; he does not view having a job as being a sellout. Most artists have to have another means of support to make a living. But he would advise, “Do not lose sight of what you want to do as an artist. Make decisions that support your ultimate goal; I turned down promotions so I could have energy for my work. Make life decisions, visioning your art and building your life around that. Most importantly, work. Work and keep on working. Art is not just something that happens; it’s something you MAKE happen.”

“Most importantly, work. Work and keep on working. Art is not just something that happens; it’s something you MAKE happen.”

Richard Blanco