The Original Gay Porn Community - Free Gay Movies and Photos, Gay Porn Site Reviews and Adult Gay Forums

  • Welcome To Just Us Boys - The World's Largest Gay Message Board Community

    In order to comply with recent US Supreme Court rulings regarding adult content, we will be making changes in the future to require that you log into your account to view adult content on the site.
    If you do not have an account, please register.
    REGISTER HERE - 100% FREE / We Will Never Sell Your Info

    To register, turn off your VPN; you can re-enable the VPN after registration. You must maintain an active email address on your account: disposable email addresses cannot be used to register.

  • Hi Guest - Did you know?
    Hot Topics is a Safe for Work (SFW) forum.

Richard Blanco - 2013 Inaugural Poet

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. Beside the road, a shack

leaning into the wind, on the wooden porch,

crates of avocados and limes, white chickens

pecking at the floor boards, and a man

under the shadow of his straw hat, staring

into the camera in 1914. He doesn't know

within 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.


He'll never buy sugar at the general store,

mail love letters at the post office, or take

a train at the depot of the town that will rise

out of hundred-million years of coral rock

on promises of paradise. He'll never ride

a Model-T puttering down the dirt road

that will be paved over, stretch farther and

farther west into the horizon, reaching for

the setting sun after which it will be named.


He can't even begin to imagine the shadows

of buildings rising taller than the palm trees,

the street lights glowing like counterfeit stars

dotting the sky above the road, the thousands

who will take the road everyday, who'll also

call this place home less than a hundred years

after the photograph of him hanging today

in City Hall as testament. He'll never meet

me, the engineer hired to transform the road

again, bring back tree shadows and birdsongs,

build another promise of another paradise

meant to last another forever. He'll never see

me, the poet standing before him, trying

to read his mind across time, wondering if

he was thinking what I'm today, both of us

looking down the road that will stretch on

for years after I too disappear into a photo.

'Groundbreaking Ceremony, City of South Miami, Sunset Drive Improvements'
"Photo of a Man on Sunset Drive: 1914, 2008"
 
I thought Richard Bianco was the Hillside Strangler, or one of them.
 
^ Well that is a pretty stupid supposition, isn't it?

It would be like me supposing that Benvolio was an intelligent, erudite multi-racial poet.



And @ Grimshaw above.

So is there a point you are making?
 
Cuban exile mother of inaugural poet laureate Richard Blanco now in spotlight as his inspiration

When Miami-raised poet Richard Blanco takes center stage to read the inaugural poem, he will become the first Hispanic and openly gay man to receive such an honor.

At first, Geysa Blanco thought her son was kidding.

"He said, ‘Mom, I have news for you,’ " Blanco said, recalling the telephone call from her son a few weeks ago.

"Between English and Spanish, he told me that they had chosen him to write and read a poem at the presidential inauguration,” she said.

But Richard Blanco, a child of exiles who was raised in Miami and graduated from Florida International University, was serious.

The Barack Obama inaugural committee chose the 44-year-old Cuban-American civil engineer and author to recite an original poem at Monday’s inauguration.

Richard Blanco has also been speechless. “It took me 10 minutes to remember what the word for inauguration is in Spanish," he said in a telephone interview Sunday from Washington, D.C., less than 24 hours before taking center stage.

Blanco, who now lives in Maine, will become the first Hispanic inaugural poet and the first openly gay one. He is also only the fifth and youngest poet in the exclusive club of poets.

The first was Robert Frost, who in 1961 wrote a poem for the inauguration of John F. Kennedy.

Then in 1993, Bill Clinton chose the African-American writer Maya Angelou. William Miller was chosen for Clinton’s second inauguration, and Elizabeth Alexander wrote the poem for Obama’s first ceremony.

In a statement, Obama said Blanco’s work represents "the great strength and diversity of the American people."

This diversity and strength could be reflected in the story of the poet’s Cuban exile mother.

"She is a very brave woman and has worked hard all her life for my brother and me," Blanco said.

During an interview at her Westchester home, Geysa Blanco, 75, said that it still seems surreal that a woman who grew up in a sugar refinery in Cienfuegos will stand in front of the National Capitol, watching her son recite a poem for the nation and the president of the United States.

“My son said reporters might want to interview me and I said, ‘Me? What for?’ ” Geysa Blanco said. Indeed, local reporters and TV cameras have come knocking and the proud mother has given several interviews.

Geysa Blanco has also become a celebrity among her neighbors, friends and customers at Regions Bank on Bird Road, where she has worked for more than 30 years.

The roots of Richard Blanco’s writing began in 1968 when his parents fled the Communist island and went into exile in Spain. At the time, Geysa Blanco, a teacher, was pregnant and she and her late husband Carlos, already had an older son, also named Carlos.

"We decided to leave Cuba because the government was becoming more and more difficult to live under," she said. "But it was very painful for me because I left my mother and brothers behind and came here virtually alone and with nothing."

After five months in Spain, where she gave birth to Richard, they emigrated to New York.

As a boy, she said Richard always had an interest in exploring his Cuban roots.

"I always had questions about Cuba, about the family we left there," he said. On his website he refers to himself as being “made in Cuba, assembled in Spain, and imported to the U.S.”

That sense of not belonging and trying to belong seeps through his books of poetry, which often feature his family and their efforts hold on to their traditions.

When Richard was about 5 and Carlos 11, the family moved to the closest place to Cuba – Miami. His mother went to work in a supermarket and later landed her bank job.

"We lived three generations in one house, my husband’s parents, my husband and I, and Charles and Richard," the poet’s mother said. "Sometimes it was hard because grandparents are not accustomed to the modern ways of young people.”

Today, she laments that those family members are gone. “I wish Richard’s father and grandparents were here to enjoy this day,” she said.

Richard Blanco did get to visit the homeland his parents yearned for when he was growing up.

"Everyone thought he wasn’t going to speak Spanish and was going to feel uncomfortable," Geysa Blanco said of her relatives on the island. "But they were surprised because he picked yucca in the fields, jumped in the canals and danced a lot, just like everyone else.”

That trip as a young man would shape the poet’s future work, his mother said. "I think that’s where he caught the bug to write about his roots," she said.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/21/3192582/cuban-exile-mother-of-poet-laureate.html#storylink=cpy
 
Hard-up1 said:
If the poet's ethnicity is token or symbolic, I have absolutely no problem with that. The U.S. has only had inaugural poets beginning with Kennedy.

That a Hispanic one may be elevated to prominence for that reason along with his merits is not objectionable to me. I like the intentional display of diversity in prominent roles, which is indeed representative of both our population and the President's supporting constituency.

As for Blanco's individual style, I don't find that relevant. No matter what poet is chosen, there will be those to favor or dislike the style. It is a true honor to be chosen, regardless of any mix of motives in the selection. The arts is a highly subjective area, so it's not like picking the fastest downhill racer.

Why the campaign to dishonor this honored man? Was he a guard at Auschwitz? Did he turn hoses on civil rights protestors? Does he own BP stock? Has he joined WBC and protested at funerals? From what I can gather, he's only guilty of not having a dark enough skin color, not speaking English with a thick foreign accent, and not being poor. Worse yet, he apparently offends an Australian. Gee.
Click to expand...


You just have to bear in mind that Grimshaw has a visceral and often stated aversion on this board to multi-ethnic people, anywhere, particularly those who are not produced from pure white semen. I'm not sure if this revulsion equals his abhorence of shit and menstruation, or if it is milder and does not produce the same kind of gag reflex for him.

Grimshaw's appreciation of poetry seems to be entirely coloured by his current fixation on this poet. Even in the Whitman thread, he couldn't leave it alone.

This aversion is also shared by Benvolio, who has gone on at great length in the CE&P boards about how America is being ruined by allowing millions of swarthy foreigners to move to the land of the free.

Both of these individuals have no poetry in their souls. Sucks eh?

Ignore them.
 
rareboy said:
You just have to bear in mind that Grimshaw has a visceral and often stated aversion on this board to multi-ethnic people, anywhere, particularly those who are not produced from pure white semen. I'm not sure if this revulsion equals his abhorence of shit and menstruation, or if it is milder and does not produce the same kind of gag reflex for him.

Grimshaw's appreciation of poetry seems to be entirely coloured by his current fixation on this poet. Even in the Whitman thread, he couldn't leave it alone.

This aversion is also shared by Benvolio, who has gone on at great length in the CE&P boards about how America is being ruined by allowing millions of swarthy foreigners to move to the land of the free.

Both of these individuals have no poetry in their souls. Sucks eh?

Ignore them.
Click to expand...

What can you expect from someone who idolizes


this man, even to the point of emulating his tactics like reductio ad absurdum to irritate political critics?
 
His poem was from the heart and addressed all Americans like Obama adressed all Americans.
 
Poet Richard Blanco reads a poem for President Obama's second inauguration. Blanco is the first Hispanic and openly gay man to read the inaugural poem.

 
^
How can you assume such things?

Had you heard of this poet beforehand? Has anyone outside the ever-diminishing circle of poetry-buyers?
 
pat grimshaw said:
^
How can you assume such things?

Had you heard of this poet beforehand? Has anyone outside the ever-diminishing circle of poetry-buyers?
Click to expand...

Says the guy who defaults to assuming the poet was only picked "to be PC."

Get real. You get more transparent every day.
 
Every scrap of media that I've seen talks about Richard Blanco's labels rather than his writing.
 
pat grimshaw said:
Every scrap of media that I've seen talks about Richard Blanco's labels rather than his writing.
Click to expand...

We live in a world where if you are ANYTHING other than a straight white male-- people notice and mention your label without even thinking about it. It's the first and most important way they identify you.

Welcome to the world since 1492, Pat. We've got some catching up to do.
 
I thought perhaps Richard Blanco's long poem might be appreciated more on the page than in the snowy streets of Washington.
 
pat grimshaw said:
I have looked hard; I challenge you to find some text published prior to last week which doesn't repeat those labels mentioned.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/
Click to expand...

Which proves nothing except the fact that western society hasn't been able to get away from boxing and labelling non-white non-heterosexual people.

It doesn't prove he was picked for no merit as a poet and only to be a certain race.

Snipe moar.
 
I want Anderson Cooper to interview Richard Blanco for the TV. I imagine them in their tweed jackets on a leather sofa by the fireside.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top