The plane taxies down the runway without my knowing that in July I’ll read my poetry at the Robert Frost farm in Derry, New Hampshire. I will walk through his home, sit in his chair at the kitchen table where he wrote, and feel the ghost of his words at my fingertips as I lay my hands over the typewriter keys. Suddenly I will understand why Frost was Frost—arguably our country’s most celebrated, honored, popular, and remembered poet—because he wrote about (and for) the things and people right before him, his America, plain and true. His work was embedded in folklore, sprung from the very pastures and pleasures, snows and sorrows of the people—including himself—in his own backyard, so to speak. Inspired and possessed, I’ll feel reborn into yet another story—the story Frost began for America. I’ll feel a responsibility to dare and dream up a new chapter that will rekindle poetry into a continuing American folklore—a folklore that would include the stories of gay America, Latino America, and immigrant America—everyone’s America.
The jet’s engine begins revving up, and so do I, beginning to think about this memoir that I will write in the months to come: part proclamation, part call to action, but all testimony—not to the power of me, or my work, or my story, but to the power of poetry as I will have witnessed it; to the hunger for poetry in our country; to the powerful role it can play and the influence it can have on so many lives, including my own. I know—believe—there’s a new dawn at hand for poetry and for poets as heroes, which parallels a new dawn in America and its changing human landscapes. I know I have work to do. I know I have to get back home—yes, through the gloss of rain or weight of snow, or the plum blush of dusk—and begin writing. I know poetry can matter.
Mark looks at me and holds my hand as the plane lifts off the ground, carried on one wind, lifting us into one sky crisp and bright as grace in my eyes, under our one sun. The sun is a sunflower after all. I gaze out my window at the Capitol—its radiating columns and arches of concrete ideals resemble a sunflower as we fly above it. Indeed, our country is a sunflower with millions of petals around a center we can’t always see or always understand, but one flower nonetheless, one story, the story we are all born into. A story we all have to continue writing together until we are not just one today, but one every day.
I had left Maine with a single poem to offer my country that I didn’t quite understand. I returned as an American, driving back home through the pines of Maine under one moon but with a thousand more stars and poems for me—for us all—to write, for us.
Acknowledgments
Thank the work of our hands, indeed—and of the minds, hearts, and souls of my village that saw me through this journey and was with me on the ground in Washington, DC: Nikki Moustaki, for her literary genius; Alison Granucci, for her spiritual merrymaking; David Naranjo, for his cultural kinship and joie de vivre; Sergio Baradat, for his images that mirror my soul; Meredith Beattie, for her leadership as even-keeled as her love; Carol Neveu, for being true as my mother; my mother, Geysa, for absolutely everything; my brother, Carlos, for loving his little brother; and my partner, Mark Neveu, the poet behind my poetry. Thanks to my village-in-spirit: Adrienne Landau, Ed Fagin, Deborah Slack, Stephen and Doreen Fishman, Brad and Stacy Standley, Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez, Campbell McGrath, and Natasha Trethewey. Thanks to Miami, my city-village of all those known and unknown from which my poetic voice was born. Thanks to the townspeople of Bethel, who confirmed my belief in the true spirit of America, especially Jewel Clark, Aranka Matolcsy, Susan Duplessis, Mike DiPhilippo, Jim Doar, Al Cressy, Holly Roberts, Bill and Sue Pike, Mo and Rob Lally, Dana Bullen, the Bethel Inn, Pok Sun Lane, Bailey Davis, Willow Ochtera, Sarah Swan, Tara Lunney, Ed and Amy Yasko—well, the whole blessed town, really! Thanks also to Frank Cimler, who I trusted would make this book possible; hats off to Mitchell Kaplan, whose generous spirit paired me with Beacon Press; and cheers to Helene Atwan, who perfectly understood this story I had to tell.
For their extraordinary support, kindness, and words of praise for this book (which you can read on my website), I want to thank Barnet Bain, Jennifer Benka, Frank Biden, Roger W. Bowen, Michael F. Brennan, Senator Susan Collins, Lorraine Cortes-Vazquez, Timothy Gunn, Aranka Matolcsy, Marilyn Moss-Rockefeller, Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, Tim Ritchie, Liv Rockefeller, Anthony D. Romero, Howard Rosenman, Lisa Schwartz, Anastasia Tonello, and Evan Wolfson.
Beacon Press
www.beacon.org
Beacon Press books
are published under the auspices of
the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
© 2013 by Richard Blanco
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
16 15 14 13 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
“América” from City of a Hundred Fires by Richard Blanco, © 1998. Reprinted
by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Text design and composition by Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services
Translations by Gabriela Jauregui
Cover art © Sergio Baradat
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Blanco, Richard, 1968–
For all of us, one today : an inaugural poet’s journey / Richard Blanco.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-8070-3380-7 (pbk. : acid-free paper)
ISBN 978-0-8070-3381-4 (ebook) (print)
1. Blanco, Richard, 1968– 2. Poets, American—Biography. 3. Immigrants—United States—Biography. 4. Gay men—United States—Biography. I. Title.
PS3552.L36533Z46 2013
811′.54—dc23
[B] 2013038547
For All of Us, One Today Page 7