Richard Blanco: A Home in Language

Richard Blanco curates poems that look to language as a spiritual and psychological home, a center from which we make sense of reality. He introduces Ada Limón confronting the limits of what a poem can do (“The End of Poetry”), Robert Hass balancing lyric with narrative to reveal how language helps us understand our lives (“Meditation at Lagunitas”), and Heather McHugh demonstrating a way to conclude a poem with a leap into another universe (“What He Thought”). Blanco closes with his poem “The Splintering,” a piece that inhabits the blessing and curse of first becoming aware of language.

Find the full recordings of Limón, Hass, and McHugh reading for the Poetry Center on Voca:

Ada Limón (December 4, 2024)
Robert Hass (September 19, 1979)
Heather McHugh (April 19, 1995)

Full transcripts of every episode are available on Buzzsprout. Look for the transcript tab under each episode.

Voca is now fully captioned, with interactive transcripts and captions available for all readings! Read more about the project here, or try out this new feature by visiting Voca.

Transcript

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JULIE SWARSTAD JOHNSON: 0:02

Welcome to Poetry Centered, where we linger in the space between a poem being spoken and a poem being heard. Poetry Centered comes to you from the University of Arizona Poetry Center, and the poets voices you'll hear come from Voca, our archive of recorded poetry readings given at the center between 1963 and today. I'm Julie Swarstad Johnson. For today's episode, we're honored to be joined by poet Richard Blanco. I was first introduced to Richard Blanco's writing in January 2013, when he read his poem One Today at Barack Obama's second presidential inauguration. I played the recording for the intro to creative writing class. I was teaching at Penn State, and I remember the cadences of Richard's poem in our basement classroom. His vision of sunlight and sky connecting the varied people of the United States. A Miami raised son of Cuban exiles, Blanco has considered what home means, where we can find home across his five books of poetry, two memoirs, other works, and ongoing role as a civic poet. His most recent book is Homeland of My Body, where his most recent poems engage with art, memory, mortality, and the freedom that comes with acceptance. Home and the home Richard finds in language provides through line for this episode. Richard introduces us to recordings by Ada Limón, Robert Hass, and Heather McHugh, teasing out both the poetic craft of these poems and the way they lead us to something outside the poem. Richard, welcome. Thank you for being here with us.[MUSIC PLAYING]

RICHARD BLANCO: 1:50

Hola. I'm Richard Blanco, recording from Rural Bethel, Maine, which has been my homestead for over 25 years. I'm surrounded by pine trees, oaks, and birches in a glorious and inspiring summer day. Glad not to be in the sweltering heat of Miami, my home city, which is where I teach during the academic year. When I first set out to choose recordings for this episode, I did so without any preconceived notion of how these poems would speak to or with each other, thematically or otherwise. But after settling on which poems I'd share, I realized that somehow, I instinctually or subconsciously chose poems that all focus on the essence of language writ large, and poetry in particular. And it kind of made sense that this happened, for a few reasons. For one, during these tumultuous times with respect to politics and social media, as a poet, I am aghast as to how language is being manipulated to circumvent truth and plain out spread lies and misinformation. Secondly, home has always been a central question of my body of work. And recently, I've realized that poetry itself, and poets, and language are a kind of home for me. Not a physical or geographical home, but a psychological or spiritual home in which I find respite. The first recording I'd like to share is Ada Limón reading her poem the end of poetry, recorded on December 4, 2024. But first, I want to share an anecdote that I think sheds light on this poem. Ada and I met over a decade ago in an elevator one evening at the Dodge Poetry Festival. We instantly connected in so many ways, and soon enough realized we were both guest poets at the festival. You should know this was way before either of our careers skyrocketed. Anyway, over a glass of wine, OK, maybe two or three glasses of wine, we, of course, began to discuss our journeys as poets, sharing that we both had other jobs that largely sustained our livelihoods at the same time. I was still a professional civil engineer, and she was still a freelance writer. Gosh, months later, I read an article of hers in an airline magazine, of all places, that made me weep. We discovered that we both came to poetry through ways that affected how we thought about poetry in the world. To paraphrase, she told me, I don't write poetry just for poets, and I wholeheartedly agreed. We share the belief that accessibility and complexity are not antonyms in poetry. Like many of her poems, this poem is an example of that. It also conveys the sense that sometimes poetry is just not enough. And maybe too much as well. During tough times, it means so much just to be embraced. Here is Ada Limón reading her poem, "The End of Poetry."[MUSIC PLAYING]

ADA LIMÓN: 5:19

This is a poem that brought me back to poetry after a while of not writing. I started making a list of all the poems I wasn't going to write, and then it turned into a poem. Sneaky. Sneaky poem. The End of Poetry. Enough of osseous and chickadee, And sunflower and snowshoes, Maple, and seeds, salmon on shoot Enough chiaroscuro Enough of thus and prophecy, And the stoic farmer and faith, and our father and tis of thee Enough of bosom and bud, Skin and God not forgetting, And star bodies, and frozen birds Enough of the will to go on and not go on, Or how a certain light does a certain thing Enough of the kneeling and the rising, And the looking inward and the looking up Enough of the gun, the drama, and the acquaintance's suicide, The long lost letter on the dresser Enough of the longing and the ego, And the obliteration of ego Enough of the mother and the child, And the father and the child And enough of the pointing to the world, Weary and desperate Enough of can you see me, can you hear me Enough I am human Enough I am alone, and I am desperate Enough of the animal saving me Enough of the high water, enough sorrow, Enough of the air and its ease I am asking you to touch me[APPLAUSE][MUSIC PLAYING]

RICHARD BLANCO: 7:13

The second recording I'd like to share is Robert Hass reading Meditation at Lagunitas. Recorded on September 19, 1979. Campbell McGrath, my graduate school mentor, was a big admirer of Robert Hass. As such, we read and studied quite a bit of his work, and I became and still am an admirer of his work as well. As do here in this exemplary poem of his, he is masterful at weaving together the narrative and lyrical modes, or rather, he's a master at leaping between one and the other. But those halcyon leaps, as my mentor called them, are not cryptic or vague. On the contrary, they are crystal clear and forthright. This allows readers to be delighted by the intriguing intellect which those leaps reveal. I often encounter students who naturally write highly lyrical poems, but who run into trouble when particular poems of theirs also need to convey an underlying narrative. Those poems are often obscure and vague. I advise such students to study Hass, to learn how he manages the connections between the lyrical and the narrative. I recommend that they reveal their own leaps to the reader, as Hass does. As regards my own poetry, which tends to be very narrative, Hass reminds me to employ more lyricism, to balance those narratives, that the two in coexistence render a more powerful and evocative poem. Lastly, I chose this poem because, like Ada's poem, it also dwells on the phenomenon of language, and its relationships to memory, existence, reality, and consciousness. Here is Robert Hass reading his poem, meditation at Lagunitas.[MUSIC PLAYING]

ROBERT HASS: 9:18

This is a poem called Meditation at Lagunitas. What happened I was talking to a friend who was trying to tell me about contemporary French language philosophy. And in the course of it, he told me that-- mentioned that words like tree were abstract words. And I always thought words like justice were abstract words, but not words like tree. And then he said, well, all words are abstract. I mean, they're not the thing. And I realized that I-- I was horrified by the idea, anyway. So this poem is Meditation at Lagunitas. All the new thinking is about loss In this, it resembles all the old thinking The idea, for example, that each particular erases the luminous clarity a general idea That the clown faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk of that black birch is, By his presence, some tragic falling off from a first world of undivided light, Or the other notion that because there is in this world No one thing to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds, A word Is elegy to what it signifies We talked about it late last night, And in the voice of my friend, There was a thin wire of grief, a tone almost querulous After a while, I understood that talking this way everything dissolves Justice, pine, hair, woman, you, and I There was a woman I made love with And I remembered how holding her small shoulders in my hands, Sometimes I felt a violent wonder at her presence, like a thirst for salt From my childhood river with its island willow, Silly music from the pleasure boat, Muddy places where we caught the little orange silver fish called pumpkinseed It heard what you had to do with her Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances I must have been the same to her But I remember so much the way her hands dismantled bread, The thing her father said that hurt her, what she dreamed There are moments when the body is as numinous as words Days that are the good flesh continuing Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, Saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.[MUSIC PLAYING]

RICHARD BLANCO: 12:00

The third recording I'd like to share is Heather McHugh reading her poem What He Thought. Recorded on April 19, 1995. Somewhat contrary to my thoughts on Robert Hass's poem, this McHugh poem is a brilliant example of how a well structured, well thought out narrative can carry a poem. It's a longish poem, 74 lines, and yet completely sustains my attention. Not a single narrative detail feels extraneous or vague. The poem is also a phenomenal example of powerful closure, how closure can wrap up a poem and yet leap into another universe. And lastly, also a great example of the kind of work that a title does in a poem. I begin all my undergraduate courses with this poem to poetically dispel or dismiss the myths that there is some kind of formula to writing poetry. And when I myself am struggling with one of my poems, I often read this one to jar me into realizing what it is that I am not saying, what it is That Is the poem inside the poem. Here is Heather McHugh reading her poem, What He Thought.[MUSIC PLAYING]

HEATHER MCHUGH: 13:32

Let me tell you. And then the Italians, they had assembled these newsmen, and flowers, and photographers, and all this stuff. And the big questions started coming at us, universal questions, philosophical questions like, what does the American phrase flat drink mean? They turned out they were all translating contemporary American novels. So their main interest was the little phrases that they didn't know. So they would ask us these questions, like cheap date. What does cheap date mean, they asked us, whereupon we felt very proud of ourselves. I mean, we said we're in Italy, and they are asking us what cheap date means? And so we start to get really-- we start to get big, grand answers. And the more we talked, the more we realized that, but among us, the Americans, there was quite a difference of definition between the women and the men. The women tended to see it as a kind of kindness done by women. That you didn't order much or something. But the emphasis was a little more toward that side. Whereas for the men, it had more to do with the distance from the dining room to the hotel or something. I don't know. I mean, it was like a whole different set of terms. So then we suddenly realized, it was more about another kind of translation. We really needed translators in the home. It wasn't abroad. That was our trouble, so to speak. And I mean, there were a lot of linguistic hilarities having-- I mean, if more Americans knew the languages of the lands they went to, these things wouldn't happen. But like I was telling the people today and in Phoenix that Bob Hassey, was one of the people on that trip, was really good at designing a sentence in English for simultaneous translation. He knew in advance there was going to be a simultaneous translator there. So he designed the phrases of his sentence in such a way. I mean, and this is all extemporaneous, it seemed, such that the first phrase would be admirable and memorable, and the guy could say it, and he could pause. I mean, I could never pause. I would forget the rest of my life if I paused. But he would pause. The guy would say it. Then the second phrase would come. It would seem even more admirable. It would build on the first phrase. The guy would translate it, and then the third and culminating phrase would come and people would gasp, and it would be the right phrase to have at the end of the sentence, and everything would be memorable. And I would have these sort of phrases dangling off at the end because I had to stop. The guy started talking when I was talking. And then I realized, they were asking questions of the men. They started to ask the big questions, but they asked them. All of the men like those questions about, history, and the future, and the state of art, and all those things. And the men answered. They were handily disposing of the questions. And then the journalist turned to me, and he said, and what do you think of feminism? And I said-- and I thought, OK, now, I can do this, The White House. Because of the extraordinary sacrifices made by decades of women before me who fought, who gave their lifeblood, who gave up everything. In order that it might be true, I don't have to worry too much about feminism. And then I heard the guy, the translator, say-- and I knew enough Italian to know that he was saying, she doesn't care about feminism.[LAUGHTER] I knew this was going to go out on the wire services all over Italy. So much for design. My advice is learn your Italian. What he thought is dedicated to a guy, Fabio Doplicher, to whom I owe the story of the poem entirely and who deserves much credit. I was too much of a coward to say this to him. My form of making my apologies for underestimating him is to have written the poem, and put his name by way of dedication. Someday he'll know what he thought. We were supposed to do a job in Italy and full of our feeling for ourselves Our sense of being poets from America We went from Rome to Fano, met the mayor, Mulled a couple matters over how to say cheap date They asked us how to say flat drink Among Italian literati, we could recognize our counterparts The academic, the apologist, The arrogant, the amorous, The brazen and the glib And there was one administrator, the conservative In suit of regulation gray, Who, like a good tour guide With measured pace and uninflected tone, Narrated sites and histories, the hired van hauled us past Of all, he was most politic and least poetic, so it seems Our last few days in Rome, When all but three of the new world birds had flown I found a book of poems this unprepossessing one had written It was there, in the pension room, a room he'd recommended, Where it must have been abandoned by the German visitor Was there a bust of them, to whom he had inscribed and dated it a month before I couldn't read Italian either, so I put the book back into the wardrobe stark We laughed Americans were due to leave tomorrow For our parting evening then, our host chose something in a family restaurant And there we sat and chatted, sat and chewed till sensible It was our last big chance to be poetic, make our mark One of us asked, what's poetry Is it the fruits, and vegetables And marketplace of Campo de Fiori, or the statue there Because I was the glib one, I identified the answer instantly I didn't have to think, the truth is both, it's both, I blurted out But that was easy, that was easiest to say What followed taught me something about difficulty For our underestimated host spoke out all of a sudden, With a rising passion, and he said The statue represents Giordano Bruno Brought to be burned in the public square Because of his offense against the authority, Which was to say, the church His crime was his belief The universe does not revolve around the human being God is no fixed point or central government, But rather is poured in waves through all things, all things move If God is not the soul itself, He is the soul of the soul of the world, such was his heresy The day they brought him forth to die They feared he might incite the crowd The man was famous for his eloquence And so his captors placed upon his face An iron mask in which he could not speak That is how they burned him That is how he died, without a word in front of everyone And poetry, we'd all put down our forks by now To listen to the man in gray He went on softly, poetry, is what he thought, but did not say.[APPLAUSE][MUSIC PLAYING]

RICHARD BLANCO: 22:11

I'll end with sharing a poem of mine from my latest book, Homeland of My Body. I chose this poem because I think it follows the same line of questioning about language as the poems of shared. But more specifically, this poem is meant to evoke the first moment when we become conscious of language which, like tasting the proverbial forbidden fruit, is both a blessing and a curse. The Splintering. As a boy, I was all body My body, part of all that was My ears were the wind, my cheeks heard My mouth, the thunder, that word in my chest My face, and the face of rain puddles cupped in my palms My lips, the wet petals, my nose kissed And I blindly saw the stars as my own eyes, Luring me that night to climb up our backyard. mango tree Its trunk, the will of my spine My arms, every branches, arms coddling the wind Its bark, the thick flesh of my hands Needled with splinters when I fell Into my mother's tearful cries Ai, dios mio I couldn't grasp her urgency Why she had to tenderly soak my hands As if I was some hurt animal she had to heal Why she spent hours pulling out every splinter with her tweezers A surgeon operating on me in her housecoat and terrycloth slippers Why her teary words, it's OK Just a few more, mijo You could have died Die, I knew nothing of dying Then she kissed the last beat of blood on my finger and said, I love you Meaning what she'd love forever was more than my body Which suddenly split from me into abstract breaths In the mouth of my mind For the first time, saying to itself Death, joy, loss saying, I love you too, mama[MUSIC PLAYING]

JULIE SWARSTAD JOHNSON: 25:24

You've been listening to Richard Blanco, and this is Poetry Centered. Richard, thank you for that journey across the decades on Voca. It's a joy to hear new connections between these poets and poems, as well as your writing. Listeners, thank you for being here, and I hope you've been finding new recordings and new poems that you love. We have two more episodes to go in this season. We'll be back two weeks from today to hear from Soham Patel. Until then, explore Voca on your own, and consider leaving us a rating or review to help others find the show. We're always so grateful that you choose to spend your time with us. See you next time.

ARIA PAHARI: 26:07

Poetry Centered is a project of the University of Arizona Poetry Center, home to a world class library of more than 135,000 items related to contemporary poetry in English and English translation. Located on the campus of the University of Arizona in Tucson, the Poetry Center library and buildings are housed on the Indigenous homelands of the Tohono O'odham and Pascua Yaqui. Poetry Centered is the work of Aria Pahari, that's me, and Julie Swarstad Johnson. Explore Voca, the Poetry Center's audio visual archive online at voca.arizona.edu.