Love Letters to Poetry | A Conversation with Richard Blanco about Poetry

I was recently in Miami where I had a chance to catch up with Richard Blanco. We’ve been friends for over twenty-five years. Our shared Cuban heritage created a strong bond as well as our love of literature. Coming from immigrant families, we felt pressure to choose practical professions, so we both have double careers, Richard as an engineer and poet, and I as an anthropologist and writer of children’s books. An ever generous friend, Richard has served as the moderator of launch events held at Books & Books for my books, Letters from Cuba and Tía Fortuna’s New Home, and he traveled with me around Maine helping me to share Lucky Broken Girl with readers all around the state. I am honored he wrote a poem, “The Island Within,” about my nostalgia for Cuba, which can be found in his book, Looking for the Gulf Motel. It’s been exciting to witness how his poetry has come to embrace a wide range of topics and concerns, inspiring young poets around the country. He was named inaugural poet by President Obama in 2013, and his beautiful inaugural poem, “One Today,” can be found in a children’s book edition with gorgeous illustrations by Dav Pilkey. Most recently, he received the National Humanities Medal at the White House from President Biden on March 21, 2023. In Miami, amid his busy schedule, we found time to celebrate the beauty of the sea, which appears frequently in his poems. Richard also kindly answered a few questions about poetry for #DiverseVerse.

Ruth Behar: Tell us about the role of poetry in your childhood. While our Cuban immigrant families may not have had poetry books for us to read, we learned about poems through the songs they played and danced to—lots of Celia Cruz and Benny Moré, among others. I know that you also felt the influence of décima poems from the Cienfuegos countryside. How did all this come together for you, so that after seeking a degree as an engineer you went on to study poetry and become a poet?

Richard Blanco: I don’t remember ever not knowing both English and Spanish. Even as a child I recall translating for my parents. I think this imprinted my psyche with a fascination for language. I understood language not merely as a method of communication, but rather, as a way of thinking, living, feeling. And so naturally I found myself attracted to poetic language, whether through songs, books, or recitation (my mother used to recite all sorts of verses from Cuba). But I never wrote poems until after I began my career as an engineer, which paved the road to poetry. Much to my surprise, my consulting engineering work involved a whole lot of oral and written communication skills—writing reports, studies, letters, proposal, etc. That early fascination for language welled up in me and I decided to explore penning poems simply following my intellectual and creative curiosities. And well, the rest is history.

RUTH: Several years ago, in 2015, we created a blog, Bridges to/from Cuba, to bring together the voices of Cubans on the island and in the diaspora. How does this work of creating bridges continue for you in your poetry, storytelling, and teaching?

RICHARD: It is interesting to think that I create bridges both as an engineer and as a poet. I believe poetry is first a bridge to myself—to my innermost and truest emotions. Then a bridge between me and my readers and listeners—a two-way bridge through which their lives cross into mine, and mine into theirs. This connection is the essence of art for both the maker and the consumer. Also, poetry creates bridges between people. When we share our understanding of a poem, we are also sharing our lives. That’s what I had in mind when I developed Miami’s Favorite Poems Project as poet laureate of Miami Dade Country. People from all walks of life are invited to share their favorite poems and the stories of how such poems came into their lives and changed them forever.

RUTH: As the Education Ambassador of the Academy of American Poets, what kinds of work are you doing to inspire young people to read, write, and fall in love with poetry?

RICHARD: Though I do meet with many students across the country, at the Academy I mostly work with educators, actually. We think that it’s much more effective to help educators better connect students with poetry because they can have a bigger and more lasting impact. The way poetry is often deemed to be taught falls short of exploring its full potential and engagement with the art for students as well as teachers. Through workshops and talks, we encourage them to discover the relevance and power of poetry, and the importance of enabling young people to encounter poetry in schools. And we share the plethora of innovative resources and activities from the Academy to help them quickly and easily bring poetry into the classroom, including lesson plans, a monthly newsletter for teachers, and the syndicated Teach This Poem series.

RUTH: You are also teaching poetry at FIU (Florida International University). Are there prompts or exercises that you have found to be especially effective with your students?

RICHARD: As Theodore Roethke noted, “Imitation, conscious imitation, is one of the great methods, perhaps the method of learning to write.” I’ve found this to be the best model for generating writing (it’s the same model I use mostly). We usually read a whole collection of poetry, then they pick a favorite poem and write an imitation of it. Writing this type of poem is an exercise in echoing (and paying attention to) several craft elements: tone, rhythm, structure, language, style, modes, thematic concerns, subject matter, etc. In way, all art is some form of imitation. Imitation and innovation.

RUTH: I am so proud of, and grateful for, our friendship over the years and the many ways our conversations have been mutually inspiring. How does friendship play a role in the life of the creative artist and especially the poet?

RICHARD: I used to say that writing is a very solitary endeavor. And it can be at times. But over the years I’ve realized we are never really writing alone. Besides sharing work and getting important feedback, our literary friendships also offer us comfort in times of doubt, they create space for us to celebrate each other, and remind us to embrace the mystery of the creative process. All these help me not only to write a better poem, but to keep on writing, and to understand myself as a writer in the world.

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Richard Blanco is the fifth presidential inaugural poet in U.S. history—the youngest, first Latino, immigrant, and gay person to serve in such a role. Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami, the negotiation of cultural identity and place characterize his body of work. He is the author of the poetry collections Looking for the Gulf Motel, Directions to the Beach of the Dead, and City of a Hundred Fires; the poetry chapbooks Matters of the Sea, One Today, and Boston Strong; a children’s book of his inaugural poem, “One Today,” illustrated by Dav Pilkey; and Boundaries, a collaboration with photographer Jacob Hessler. His latest book of poems, How to Love a Country (Beacon Press, 2019), both interrogates the American narrative, past and present, and celebrates the still unkept promise of its ideals. He has also authored the memoirs The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood and For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey. Blanco’s many honors include the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press, the PEN/Beyond Margins Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, and two Maine Literary Awards. He has been a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow and received honorary doctorates from Macalester College, Colby College, and the University of Rhode Island. He has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning and NPR’s Fresh Air. The Academy of American Poets named him its first Education Ambassador in 2015. He lives with his husband in Bethel, ME. You can find out more about him at his website, richard-blanco.com/.