For All of Us, One Today by Richard Blanco

Author:Richard Blanco
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Beacon Press

. . . equations to solve, history to question,

or atoms imagined . . .

Many other artistic revelations and decisions happened while sitting with America at my kitchen table in Bethel working on the poem, sometimes until dawn. In fact, the very first line, One sun rose on us today . . . , struck me as I gazed out the kitchen window, watching the sun brushing the tips of the hemlocks that buttress my house. It was the same sun of forty years before, when I had wanted to believe it was no bigger than a sunflower; the same sun peek-a-booing through the palm trees in Miami since I was a child; the same sun my soul had taken in countless times rising over the ocean. One sun prompted the images of one sky, one wind, one ground, and one moon. These became the armature of “One Today,” tapping into the transcendent power of nature as a common human denominator that connects all our individual stories. One of the great challenges of writing an occasional poem is how to be intimate and conversational while also being grand and Whitmanesque. The natural imagery became a stand-in for the grandness of the poem, in contrast to the intimate details of real people going about their daily lives. The poem began to alternate, breathe, zoom in and out between these two modes.

Another challenge that emerged was establishing the poem’s boundaries: Was it possible to have a poem that harkened back to the landing of the Pilgrims and moved forward through hundreds of years of history? No, I decided, thinking such a poem would be too diluted or else it would have to be a two-hundred-page epic. I made a conscious choice to keep the focus of “One Today” on a contemporary setting—a snapshot of the country at our present moment, of which I was a part.

This triggered yet another challenge: how to make the poem mine, that is, how to invest myself personally and be vulnerable in the poem, rather than appear distant and preachy? This is why I decided to include specific autobiographical references to my mother and father, and also a moment when I refer to myself as the living poet behind the voice of the poem, all with the intention of creating an honest, emotional bond between the audience, the poem, and me, making their stories, my story, our story. This same intent prompted me to also include more subtle nods in the poem relating to my life as an engineer, as a gay man, and as a Latino.

In the end, there was no doubt in my mind that “One Today” was the perfect choice for an inaugural poem, one I could proudly read about and for America. Meeting my deadline, January 14, 2013, at noon, I e-mailed the final version of “One Today” to the inaugural committee. They forwarded it to the White House for final review and approval. Surprisingly, within an hour I heard back from the committee with news that the White House had signed off on my final submission with the words They love it.

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