Richard Blanco, gay Cuban American poet, selected to read at Obama's inauguration

Doctor Faustus · Jan 9, 2013

New York Times said:

From the moment Barack Obama burst onto the political scene, the poet Richard Blanco, a son of Cuban exiles, says he felt “a spiritual connection” with the man who would become the nation’s 44th president.

...

Now Mr. Obama is about to pluck Mr. Blanco out of the relatively obscure and quiet world of poetry and put him on display before the entire world. On Wednesday the president’s inaugural planners will announce that Mr. Blanco is to be the 2013 inaugural poet, joining the ranks of notables like Robert Frost and Maya Angelou.

...

While “City of a Hundred Fires” and Mr. Blanco’s second book, “Directions to the Beach of the Dead” (University of Arizona Press, 2005) explore his Cuban heritage, Mr. Blanco’s most recent collection, “Looking for the Gulf Motel,” published last year, incorporates his life as a gay man in the very conservative Cuban culture.

“It’s trying to understand how I fit between negotiating the world, between being mainstream gay and being Cuban gay,” he said.

Now Mr. Blanco, who is also at work on a memoir, is focused on an entirely new and, colleagues say, exceedingly difficult endeavor: composing what is known in his trade as an “occasional poem,” written to commemorate a specific event. After learning of his selection on Dec. 12 — he has kept it a secret even from his mother — he began drafting three poems; the Obama team will pick one for him to read at the inaugural ceremony.

“The challenge,” he said, “is how to be me in the poem, to have a voice that’s still intimate but yet can encompass a multitude of what America is.”
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A really exciting announcement! Thanks to the POTUS, I've discovered a truly terrific poet who writes about exile, displacement and identity in ways that really resonate with my British Chinese, bicultural, homosexual self. His university mentor, Campbell McGrath, is also a very interesting writer.

Full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/books/richard-blanco-2013-inaugural-poet.html.

You can find Richard Blanco's official site here: Richard Blanco: Poetry of Place, Home, and Identity

IrisM · Jan 9, 2013

Nice. c:

Richard Blanco, gay Cuban American poet, selected to read at Obama's inauguration

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Richard Blanco, gay Cuban American poet, selected to read at Obama's inauguration

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