Richard Blanco - 2013 Inaugural Poet

[xbuzzerx]

The rest of the article is well worth a read.

I would actually go out of my way to dig up that cunt's corpse, fuck her skull and then piss on the rest of her remains.

Make her give up her recipes first. Cuban food is good.

 

[Ninja108]

Good for him. Not much for poetry though.

 

[pat grimshaw]

… Not much for poetry though.

what do you mean?

 

[miaedu]

Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco Talks About His Inspiration

In the video below, Blanco talks about his desire to create a poem of unity and love, as he believes the occasion demanded.

 

[rareboy]

Make her give up her recipes first. Cuban food is good.

Just to show the vicious bitch what I thought of her, I`d go to someone else`s grandmother for family recipes.

Yes. That is how cold I am.

 

[miaedu]

Richard Blanco: The High, Low and... the Middlebrow!

Richard Blanco, the inaugural laureate, took the stage before a national audience at our great nation's domed capital to deliver his oration. His poem, intoned in a solemn voice, had all the bells and whistles: epic and cinematic and patriotic -- it opens with the light of the rising sun filtering Westward through America, retracing the passage of Manifest Destiny, alighting upon thronging crowds, staining glass windows and, periodically, touching upon the poet himself: gay, Cuban, immigrant, working class. It was intended to be a touching poem -- a crowd pleaser.

The entire time I was watching, I kept thinking on something not so august and grand. And I will share it with you, not to be snarky, but to be honest: I thought of the time I spent three months in New York and, while taking the subway, watched a woman read a book -- almost as if she was transported from the din and clatter and stink. Her face was beatific, like one of those martyrs in medieval paintings -- who are ecstatic in their gory death. The cover had the image of a handsome young man with a striking resemblance to Tyson Beckford, rendered in highly shaded pencil -- regular, soft features; devilish eyes; and a head cloth that in the street slang of the urban culture is referred to as a "do rag." The title of the book was Homo Thug.

Don't get me wrong. This anecdote is not leading to a meditation on Blanco's sexuality, which the press already has much ballyhooed. It is not an attempt to make light of his brave act of self-display, of coming out -- an act which never happens once but over and over again.

But truth be told, Homo Thug flashed before my eyes at that moment. And it speaks less to the issue of sexuality and more to the striking difference I see in the way that people react to literature in this time when the Internet inundates us with verbiage. Most of my friends admit on Facebook that they left the room -- pee break! -- when Blanco took the stage. And it fascinated me that we can find high brow entertainments so inaccessible -- as compelling as steel cut oatmeal, as satisfying as wheat germ.

Everybody turns their nose at an inaugural poem. Everybody makes sure to come back for Beyonce. So, what I was really thinking about when these two figures flashed in juxtaposition -- like all moments of epiphany -- was the high and the low brow... and this lead me to wondering if there was a place for the middlebrow. If so, what is the middlebrow? Let me explain.

The high brow is something that is relatively new to American culture. For centuries, we couldn't do anything but imitate Merry Old England. And it made us always seem second-class and kind of sucky. You see, poetry was considered a sign of great civilization and so the presence of great poetry was like the proliferation of a nuclear arsenal: a logical extension of the arms race: a sign of might. So, the absence of the nuclear warhead of poetry bugged us then just as it probably bugs North Korea now. Why wasn't there a poetry that was distinctly American? Why were we still copying things written over a century ago and long gone out of fashion by people across the great pond whom we were supposed to be independent from? Why did we keep on trying yet never get it right? People spent a lot of time wondering about this predicament and, frustratingly, couldn't find the solution. So though we forget, this much is true: Blanco's poem is a sign of America's might -- as powerful as bombs bursting in air and as potent as Beyonce's highest note. It's just that now: nobody gives a darn... at least on the national stage.

Among community's of color, though -- Latino, African-American, Asian -- the high brow still matters precisely because it is a display of a certain kind of power: a legitimacy. It is the low brow that is all around, which is cast off and derided, even as it is eagerly consumed in subways and buses and waiting rooms -- a treat that, no doubt, will cause spiritual diabetes. My own community -- Vietnamese-American -- has all sorts of low brow entertainments. But we find acceptance, worthiness, accomplishment in the high brow: award winning novels and poems and films. They may be boring and hardly consumed by any but a few... but they signal a stage: a moment of entering into the mainstream, the rise of an aspiring 1 percent. They are mighty works, like the pyramids of Ozymandias.

So where is the middlebrow in all of this? What does it mean to have a middlebrow literature? Does it mean that minority communities have entered into a new stage of development? Well, I'm not sure. It's an open question. To be fair, I should now make my full disclosure and tell you this: I'm writing a middlebrow book -- the first Vietnamese-American detective novel with a Vietnamese-American detective, written by a Vietnamese-American. That's how I'm billing it. So understandably that is what is on my mind, nowadays. That's all I think about night and day. And everything, even the words read at the inauguration of the first ever black second term president gets sucked into my obsessive vortex. I'm wondering what it means when a new figure with a new kind of story takes the stage. Will people pay attention? Will it speak to them? Or are they all going to go out to pee?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/khanh-ho/richard-blanco_b_2547080.html

 

[pat grimshaw]

^




The conflict between highbrow and vulgar populism happens back at the source.

The Master of the Queen's Music had a similar function to The Poet Laureate. But England's last Master of the Queen's Music was considered too highbrow/abstruse so Andrew LLoyd Webber was given specific commissions instead.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_the_Queen's_Music

 

[SLOPPYSECONDS]

Richard Blanco: The High, Low and... the Middlebrow!

Richard Blanco, the inaugural laureate, took the stage before a national audience at our great nation's domed capital to deliver his oration. His poem, intoned in a solemn voice, had all the bells and whistles: epic and cinematic and patriotic -- it opens with the light of the rising sun filtering Westward through America, retracing the passage of Manifest Destiny, alighting upon thronging crowds, staining glass windows and, periodically, touching upon the poet himself: gay, Cuban, immigrant, working class. It was intended to be a touching poem -- a crowd pleaser.

The entire time I was watching, I kept thinking on something not so august and grand. And I will share it with you, not to be snarky, but to be honest: I thought of the time I spent three months in New York and, while taking the subway, watched a woman read a book -- almost as if she was transported from the din and clatter and stink. Her face was beatific, like one of those martyrs in medieval paintings -- who are ecstatic in their gory death. The cover had the image of a handsome young man with a striking resemblance to Tyson Beckford, rendered in highly shaded pencil -- regular, soft features; devilish eyes; and a head cloth that in the street slang of the urban culture is referred to as a "do rag." The title of the book was Homo Thug.

Don't get me wrong. This anecdote is not leading to a meditation on Blanco's sexuality, which the press already has much ballyhooed. It is not an attempt to make light of his brave act of self-display, of coming out -- an act which never happens once but over and over again.

But truth be told, Homo Thug flashed before my eyes at that moment. And it speaks less to the issue of sexuality and more to the striking difference I see in the way that people react to literature in this time when the Internet inundates us with verbiage. Most of my friends admit on Facebook that they left the room -- pee break! -- when Blanco took the stage. And it fascinated me that we can find high brow entertainments so inaccessible -- as compelling as steel cut oatmeal, as satisfying as wheat germ.

Everybody turns their nose at an inaugural poem. Everybody makes sure to come back for Beyonce. So, what I was really thinking about when these two figures flashed in juxtaposition -- like all moments of epiphany -- was the high and the low brow... and this lead me to wondering if there was a place for the middlebrow. If so, what is the middlebrow? Let me explain.

The high brow is something that is relatively new to American culture. For centuries, we couldn't do anything but imitate Merry Old England. And it made us always seem second-class and kind of sucky. You see, poetry was considered a sign of great civilization and so the presence of great poetry was like the proliferation of a nuclear arsenal: a logical extension of the arms race: a sign of might. So, the absence of the nuclear warhead of poetry bugged us then just as it probably bugs North Korea now. Why wasn't there a poetry that was distinctly American? Why were we still copying things written over a century ago and long gone out of fashion by people across the great pond whom we were supposed to be independent from? Why did we keep on trying yet never get it right? People spent a lot of time wondering about this predicament and, frustratingly, couldn't find the solution. So though we forget, this much is true: Blanco's poem is a sign of America's might -- as powerful as bombs bursting in air and as potent as Beyonce's highest note. It's just that now: nobody gives a darn... at least on the national stage.

Among community's of color, though -- Latino, African-American, Asian -- the high brow still matters precisely because it is a display of a certain kind of power: a legitimacy. It is the low brow that is all around, which is cast off and derided, even as it is eagerly consumed in subways and buses and waiting rooms -- a treat that, no doubt, will cause spiritual diabetes. My own community -- Vietnamese-American -- has all sorts of low brow entertainments. But we find acceptance, worthiness, accomplishment in the high brow: award winning novels and poems and films. They may be boring and hardly consumed by any but a few... but they signal a stage: a moment of entering into the mainstream, the rise of an aspiring 1 percent. They are mighty works, like the pyramids of Ozymandias.

So where is the middlebrow in all of this? What does it mean to have a middlebrow literature? Does it mean that minority communities have entered into a new stage of development? Well, I'm not sure. It's an open question. To be fair, I should now make my full disclosure and tell you this: I'm writing a middlebrow book -- the first Vietnamese-American detective novel with a Vietnamese-American detective, written by a Vietnamese-American. That's how I'm billing it. So understandably that is what is on my mind, nowadays. That's all I think about night and day. And everything, even the words read at the inauguration of the first ever black second term president gets sucked into my obsessive vortex. I'm wondering what it means when a new figure with a new kind of story takes the stage. Will people pay attention? Will it speak to them? Or are they all going to go out to pee?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/khanh-ho/richard-blanco_b_2547080.html

no not
High glop make glop glop ans all glop high
ans equals oppurtunes glop a too

there go

thankyou

no charge

 

[pat grimshaw]

We discussed the poem at our literature group.



We thought this classic of American music matched it with the same qualities of episodic, free form and discursive introspection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoxville:_Summer_of_1915
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/toda...d-barack-obama-inauguration/story?id=18274653

 

[SLOPPYSECONDS]

coor new president alreedy

we a we wot here ans there
is we wot is ans is a we
ans alls a wewe
be
da end

ans hotdogs on president

thankyou

 

[miaedu]

Richard Blanco selected to read poem at U.S. embassy opening in Cuba

Renowned poet Richard Blanco has been selected to write and read a poem at the U.S. embassy's reopening in Havana, Cuba, on Friday.

Blanco, who was the first Latino to be chosen as a presidential inaugural poet, will read a poem that he wrote especially for the occasion where Secretary of State John Kerry will raise the American flag over the embassy.

"As a poet, and as a Cuban-American, I am proud and grateful for the opportunity to be part of this historic moment," Blanco said. "It is a true honor to return to the country of my roots in this capacity, and commemorate this step in improving relations between the United States and Cuba."

watch video: http://www.local10.com/news/richard...d-poem-at-us-embassy-opening-in-cuba/34678396

 

[rareboy]

Since I see that Grimshaw is on-line......I am delighted to know that this news will likely make his head explode.

 

[SLOPPYSECONDS]

how ya mak poem ova usa admins ans cuba admins doodoo
_guess it wast a dream_
" usa ans cuba will now a use sames a hand mades a butt wipe papa pressnet bys a local carefull pick ta lookee goddy ons camera "

anyway

got luv centurys a apeess spins ans rinse

tinku

 

[miaedu]

American poet, Blanco, urges U.S., Cuba "to breathe together, to heal together"

 

[mikemizanin729]

I must say that I don't find his poetry to be all that enjoyable, and he's not a patch on this man.

Philip Larkin is to be commemorated in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. There will be a stone, engraved with his name and an appropriate line of his verse, set in the floor.

 

[SLOPPYSECONDS]

stone in floor
_mop mop mop_
ha

tinku

 

[pat grimshaw]

I'm not hearing much Richard Blanco poetry nor Richard Blanco publicity this last decade.

It must be time for some new poets

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