Recorded 5/1/19
Former poet laureate Richard Blanco reads from his new book How To Love A Country.
As presidential inaugural poet and educator, Richard Blanco has crisscrossed the nation inviting communities to connect to the heart of human experience and our shared identity as a country. In this new collection of poems, his first in over seven years, Blanco continues to invite a conversation with all Americans.
This forum is a collaboration with the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation in Waltham.
Blanco’s poems form a mosaic of seemingly varied topics: the Pulse Nightclub massacre; an unexpected encounter on a visit to Cuba; the forced exile of 8,500 Navajos in 1868; a lynching in Alabama; the arrival of a young Chinese woman at Angel Island in 1938; the incarceration of a gifted writer; and the poet’s abiding love for his partner, who he is finally allowed to wed as a gay man. But despite each poem’s unique concern or occasion, all are fundamentally struggling with the overwhelming question of how to love this country.
Blanco unravels the very fabric of the American narrative and pursues a resolution to the inherent contradiction of our nation’s psyche and mandate: e pluribus unum (out of many, one). Charged with the utopian idea that no single narrative is more important than another, this book asserts that America could and ought someday to be a country where all narratives converge into one, a country we can all be proud to love and where we can all truly thrive.
Richard Blanco is the first immigrant, the first Latino, the first openly gay person and the youngest person to be the U.S. inaugural poet. He was selected as the 2013 inaugural poet by President Barack Obama. His poems explore themes of Latino identity and place. In his latest memoir, The Prince of Los Cocuyos, Blanco reflects on his childhood growing up in Miami as a child of Cuban-exile parents. Blanco is the author of three poetry collections: Directions to The Beach of the Dead, winner of the PEN/Beyond Margins Award; City of a Hundred Fires and Looking for The Gulf Motel. Blanco is a fellow of the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and has taught at Georgetown and American universities. Listen to The Cuban Connection featuring poet Richard Blanco recorded at Cambridge Forum 12/16/2015: