Photo: Miamiherald.com
It would seem that, for a poet, nothing could top being asked to pen and then recite a poem for a presidential inauguration.
But for Richard Blanco, who got such an honor in 2013, when he read his poem “One Today” at President Barack Obama’s second inauguration, Friday will bring an even more special, poignant milestone.
That is when Blanco, the son of Cuban immigrants who fled Fidel Castro’s regime, was in Havana to read a poem he was asked by the Obama administration to write for the momentous reopening of the U.S. Embassy.
“This is just so core,” Blanco, 47, said in a telephone interview with Fox News Latino. “There is a real personal history. I’m so honored and so humbled and so elated. I’m in la-la land.”
Blanco’s parents were staunchly against Cuba’s communist government, the Castro regime and, like many Cuban exiles, opposed to any expression by the U.S. government of leniency or amiability toward them.
Poetry is about reaching for our common humanity. I had to tread very lightly, much like the inaugural poem. I knew I didn’t want a poem that was politically charged one way or the other. That is what political speeches are for. Richard Blanco, who wrote a poem about U.S. and Cuba which he read at U.S. flag-raising in Havana
He was born in Spain and grew up in Miami, which became home to the largest population of Cuban exiles in the world.
Blanco’s childhood Miami was a place where exiles, for well over a decade, spun visions of returning to Cuba. Erstwhile Miami was where many saw the U.S. embargo and the U.S. government’s refusal to engage in any kind of diplomacy with the regime as…..
To read full article: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2015/08/13/son-cuban-exiles-says-reciting-poem-at-embassy-opening-is-his-easiest-yet/
