© 2024 WLRN
MIAMI | SOUTH FLORIDA
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Richard Blanco's inaugural poem, One Today, may have addressed the whole nation, but the details were full of South Florida. Blanco is the son of Cuban exiles. He was born in Spain and came to Miami as a small child. He trained to be a civil engineer but a class at Florida International University later launched his poetry career. His poetry draws on images of a childhood spent in a tight-knit South Florida Cuban community.

Richard Blanco On Being the Inaugrual Poet

richard-blanco.com

Richard_Blanco_Part_II_web.mp3
Listen to Richard Blanco discuss the intersection of his dual career: civil engineer and poet. And was he named after Richard Nixon?

When Richard Blanco got the call that he'd been chosen to write a poem for President Obama's second inauguration, at first he thought it was a prank. He still has no idea how he ended up on the President's radar.

"I would dream actually that the President has actually read my work and was so moved by it," says Blanco, laughing, "that he said, 'I want this guy to read a poem at the inaugural.'"

After the announcement, he says there was such an outpouring of love and support from Miami, he had to get back here from his home in Bethel, Maine, as soon as he could. 

So tonight (Feb. 22) at 7:30, he'll be at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts to talk about growing up in Miami and his road to the inauguration and, of course, to read his poetry. The event is free, but tickets are required.

(If you miss him this time around, he'll be back in April for the O, Miami Poetry Festival.)

Blanco-word_for_inauguration_web.mp3
Richard Blanco tells WLRN why it took him a little while to explain to his mother that he'd been chosen as the inaugural poet.
Blanco-poem_web.mp3
Blanco says this section of his inaugural poem, One Today, was informed by his experiences growing up in Miami.

Blanco was amazed by how much freedom he had with the poem. He thought he'd be reading from a teleprompter, but instead he had his own paper copy and was even still tweaking his poem, "One Today," right up until he read it on inauguration day. 

The son of Cuban exiles says a career in the arts didn't seem like an option when he was growing up. He was good in math, and his parents encouraged him to become a civil engineer -- a career he enjoyed a lot.

That's what he was doing when he made his first forays into poetry. A Sunset Drive improvement project in South Miami inspired a poem he read, in a hard hat, on the occasion of the groundbreaking. 

Photo of a Man on Sunset Drive

Circa 1914 and 2008

And so it began: the earth torn, split open

by a dirt road cutting through palmettos

and wild tamarind trees defending the land

against the sun. Next to the road, a shack

leans into the wind, on the wooden porch,

white chickens peck at the floor boards

beside crates of avocados and key limes, 

a man under the shadow of his hat, stares

into the camera. It is 1914. He doesn't know

that in a lifetime the unclaimed land behind 

him will be cleared of scrub and sawgrass, 

the soil will be turned, made to give back

what the farmers wish, their lonely houses 

will stand acres apart from one another, 

jailed behind the boughs of their orchards.

Read the rest of the poem here

Copyright: Richard Blanco, 2008

 

 

Alicia Zuckerman is Editorial Director at WLRN, where she edits narrative and investigative audio journalism. In 2020, she was named Editor of the Year by the Society of Professional Journalists Florida chapter.
More On This Topic