The ThinkND Podcast
The ThinkND Podcast
Letra Latinas, Part 6: A Conversation with National Humanities Medal Recipient Richard Blanco
Continuing Letras Latinas’ yearlong 20th anniversary series, in October 2024 Notre Dame welcomed visiting poets Richard Blanco and Rigoberto González. Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology was released in September 2024, and was edited by Rigoberto González, and includes the work of Richard Blanco.
Richard was introduced by his longtime friend, special guest and fellow Miami poet Emma Trelles. Earlier in the day, Emma sat down with Richard for an oral history conversation. Listen in as they discuss the unexpected role of ambition in the creative process, how language can be a way of breathing in the world, and his continuous search for relevance as an elder in the poetry community.
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Hi everyone. My name is Emma Treyes and I am here with Richard Blanco, in McKenna Hall at the University of Notre Dame on October 16th, 2024. we're going to have a conversation as part of Letras Latinas Oral History Project. Thank you for joining me today. Great to be here. It's so nice to see you too. it was suggested to me that this not be a typical interview. One in which the questions I pose to you are not just a cataloging of bibliographic information, but questions that are drawn from my own artistic curiosity. And I just wanted to let you know that.
3:The best kind.
1:Yeah. I just figured there's so much written about you, by now. this is something Francisco suggested to me as well. people can get that information anywhere at this point, right? It's online. It's on your fabulous website.
Facebook, Instagram,
1:Exactly. So I thought I'd start, at the beginning because, I love chronology, even if it's a loose one at that. And I wanted to start at our beginnings, our shared beginning, which is the MFA program at Florida International University. there's so much importance now placed on MFA programs and their rankings. some of it has to do with financial support. Some of it has to do with curriculum and rightly but a lot of it also has to do with this perceived prestige. When we both attended FIU's graduate program, it was not very well known, very under the radar, almost anonymous, I would say. I wanted to start out by asking, You to share your decision making process, why you chose, why you even chose to attend an MFA, why FIU, should early stage poets, interested in an MFA concern themselves with the program's prominence. and what you think the most valuable consideration they can make if they decide, okay, I do, I want to attend this MFA. So yeah, just take us to your mindset at that time, like why FIU?
my undergraduate degree is from FIU, as, as might be out there in, in bioland, my first degree and career has been in it. I'd been a practicing civil engineer for most of my life and stumbled into poetry. I always wanted to do something creative, not in lieu of, but in addition to, just to complement my life, I just wanted to explore something that. that was lacking in my upbringing as a lower working class immigrant kid. the arts, were things we had exposure to and things we just couldn't afford, basically.
2:what was it about poetry and language? it could have been acting, singing, sculpting. Why poetry?
I fairly recently answered that question for myself, because even to this day, like not long ago, I was, why poetry? And I did dabble in some other things, like painting and whatnot. But something about language took hold in me. as an engineer, there was a lot of writing involved, and that's where it really started taking hold. And I thought that was it, but it wasn't until recently. I think it's because I never remember not knowing two languages. I was 45 days old when I got to this country. my brother was already seven. I was the first one to learn English in the house, a decent amount of it. I remember translating for my parents when I was like five, six years old, they would ask me, how do you say this? And how do you say that in English? I think that imprinted in me a real fascination for language. an understanding that language is not just a form of communication, but a way of thinking about the world, a way of breathing in the world. language was power. When you have your parents asking you to say something in another language that they don't know, that does something. So I think when that creative trigger, I finally pulled it, I think I went to language naturally because of that.
1:As a source of empowerment. yeah,
very much. I was using it even in my engineering, writing and became the go to person for writing proposals in the office. the person that gets promoted in an engineering firm is the person that knows how to write, believe it or not. so when that happened, I just went into poetry following my creative and intellectual curiosities. it was a gift to myself to just have fun with it. Like I wasn't worried about publishing. First of all, very little about poetry in general. when I first started writing poems, I was writing like British dead white guys. Cause that was my sense of poetry from high school. I was writing about daffodils in Miami. I just started exploring. I took a first couple of workshops at Miami Dade college when I was my main, then community college. And slowly really started loving it and improving and really my eyes opened to, contemporary poetry. There's Latino authors and Sandra Cisneros. And that all started, pulling me in. the decision to get an MFA was the practicality of being an immigrant or a child immigrant, which is if I'm going to do this stuff, I might as well get a degree. That was a very practical choice. Why FIU? I wasn't going to switch careers at this point. I couldn't afford to go away to school back for my undergraduate, much less in my graduate, school. so that was also a practical choice. being an FIU alum already, I knew the school So I still work full time as an engineer, even while I'm going to graduate school full time. that was part of the decision the practicality of being able to do both. I have to put my career and frankly, my only source of income. I will say though, as far as the latter part of your question is something I think about now as a teacher, because students ask me these kinds of questions all the time. And now. I teach at my alma mater in the same classroom where I learned how to write poetry, which is really cool. what I love about it for you, it's much more well known now, right? But it hasn't grown immensely. what I love about teaching, there is a couple of things that I tell my students to watch out for Or look for it depending on what they're really seeking or what they're craving. One is I call it, a boutique program, You really get one on one attention, which is, not the case in every MFA program. And for me, Mike Campbell McGrath, my mentor, it was like, he's still the voice in my head, like the editor in my head. there's a real sense of we really care about our students. and we really forward bonds with them. I go home and I'm like, I'm thinking about someone's poem and I'm like, I got to write them right now, so it's a really almost a one on one. And the other thing that I love about FRU that I now look back and realize that I benefited from that as well. And An unspoken, guiding principle we have is that we're here to help you write the poem that you want to write, so we're not going to superimpose any kind of aesthetic or principle upon you, this is how you should write poetry, And I've heard that there are programs that have this weighty sense of what a poem is and should be. And you have to adapt yourself to write that way. I've heard those complaints. as faculty, we try to help bring out what kind of poem and what kind of work students want to, write. as far as the practicality of it, I say one of the greatest benefits of an MFA. is the structure it gives you in the discipline. Cause you have to write a book in two and a half or three years and just getting the feedback, which, that's part of the big part of the value is just having that guided, you could do it on your own and certainly everyone is capable of doing things on their own. I think it was a little more difficult because when you go to an MFA, you're saying, I'm taking time out from my life to do this. I think that's the value of it. at the end of the day, there are great poets that are not great teachers and there are great teachers that may not be the most famous poets. I always tell students, if you're going to go for a program, make sure that you like the work of the faculty and, and that you'll get to work with the faculty because some of these schools are, they have so and so on their masthead, but how closely are you going to work with them? So anyway, there's a lot to consider, but, I also tell students there's this rush now to get an MFA, You can take up to seven years to get here, unless you're getting a TAship, which is another story, but that's what I did. I just worked full time and ended the program as best I could, as quickly as I could.
1:I really like what you said about the individualized attention, a real personalization. So it's more like a mentorship. then just a packed classroom or being another cog in a wheel you want to go to a place that looks at it like a relationship.
And I think that trickles down to the way that students treat each other, like you and I, right? there's a camaraderie that I see amongst the students and I see it building, as the semesters move along, that cohort, and they themselves feel like it's not this competitive model, but rather they're here to help each other become the best writers they can.
1:It's definitely a kind of modeling that you're doing for them, and it's something that they can then carry into their communities where competitiveness keeps on, going down the rungs, right? Until it just slips off the ladder. And instead it's about friendship and building community.
To this day, now he's my colleague, but throughout the years, I've always kept in touch with Campbell McGrath, my mentor. Same. Voice in my head.
1:So I wanted to move on to, your hopes for your first book. many of us in our program, as you mentioned, didn't even send our work out for publication back then. some of us hadn't even developed our own voices really, enough as poets when we graduated, but your own voice and poems. were quite accomplished when you finished, I was under the impression that your first book was pretty much your thesis. could you tell me a little bit about the journey of your first book? How did you know it was complete? What were your hopes for it? what did you think was going to happen? versus what actually happened.
That's great. These are cool questions. maybe this has a little to do with what we're talking about the program itself, I love telling this story, When I walked into my first graduate creative writing workshop, Campbell gives us an assignment and we read some Ginsburg and Frost and Whitman. he gave us an assignment. I think you probably may have had the same assignment at some point.
2:can't remember.
Write a poem about America.
2:Oh, yes.
And I'm like, what America are these white guys talking about? And it's not that he was imposing anything on us, but he's just thinking about the theme of America, right? From different perspectives in American literature. and I went home and scratched my head. I'm like, I don't know what the hell am I gonna write. Cause this is maybe I shouldn't do this. And I went home and penned, I was like, what's the most American thing? I didn't think it was Thanksgiving. So I wrote a poem about a childhood memory of the child's longing to finally have a real American Thanksgiving, which included turkey, not pork. And I thought, this isn't a poem. This is just a cute, anecdote. and I walked in to show my poem and I'm like, is it going to get blown out of the water? And it was, really well received. But why I say that story is because that moment opened up a floodgate for me. I didn't know what exactly I wanted to write about. I didn't know I had all these questions about it, about home, identity, belonging. all those ideas of identity, how they're, in me since I was a kid I've had these questions. I think that was part of what helped me develop the book earlier, or I zeroed in luckily, not necessarily by, by my own, my own will. But I think that's part of what we're trying to find a voice is trying to find that one thing, that one question that we will probably have all our lives, And that we're not going to fully answer. And luckily for me, that happened just as I started my MFA program. I already knew, I would take the assignment and I already knew what I wanted to write about and not manipulate it, but use the assignment to my advantage.
1:Your lens.
Yeah. And so that first poem became the first poem in the book, and the second assignment became the second, more or less, almost like that Because I was discovering what all these questions meant as I was writing more and more, and that itself blended to the structure of the book, which was an evolution of that question of home, And yeah, it was my thesis was what got published. again, I'm, at this point,
1:Did you send it out to Pitt for the Agnes Starrett Prize?
Yeah.
1:Was that one of the first ones you sent?
Yeah. I sent to a few, I used to hate sending out individual poems, but once the book was done and I worked again closely I felt proud. in a good way, of course, doubtful, but proud at the same time. it was a time in America where, Latino Latinx voices were really on the rise. it felt like I would be in company with people. there was the rise of Sandra Cisneros and, Julio Alvarez, these Latina authors, exploded on the scene. So there, I felt like a part of a wave that was encouraging but if you ask me at the beginning of the MFA, I was just like, I don't want to be a poet. I cared nothing about publishing. I was just, I'm an engineer. this is pure fun.
1:And you approach the making the book like an engineer too, might I add when you were like first assignment, first poem, second assignment, second poem. You were literally building it.
Even not knowing that the left brain was there. But, throughout the process of the MFA, I felt more like a writer then, also, of course, the dream was to get a book published and become a professor. so that was part of the goal, eventually, but I think it was helpful to not worry about that in the beginning. I'm here to just write the best poems I can, right? And then not worry about the book. I see more of that, stress with students now that they're already thinking about when their books, like going to be published. Take the MFA time to just work on your writing. Like just do that and don't worry about the other stuff that'll come down. the engineer did take over again because I made a list, I made a spreadsheet. back then you had to because you had to send the self addressed stamped envelope and you didn't know what you sent to whom and
1:there was
So you had to check, Oh, this one got rejected. I got the note back and so I was, I started becoming more methodical about it. in my last year on MFA, I was a finalist for a couple competitions. One was the Agnes Lynch Stark Prize, and being naive sometimes works to your advantage, so I called, I didn't win, I was finalist, and I called the editor at Old Chester, rest in peace, which apparently you're not supposed to do, and I was like, hey, Ed, Why didn't I win? I asked, was there a stinker poem? how do you know if you don't get feedback? he said, no, sometimes we just gotta pick somebody, but usually a second or third time entrance that win the award. And so I worked on that a little bit more and came up with a few new poems. the next year I won. maybe Ed was like, let's just give it to Blanco so it doesn't bug me again. I polished it a bit. I still have a cassette tape from the recorder,
1:Dancer
You kept it? When Ed called and left a message. That's wonderful. And so that was great. and then I ran to the bookstores here and my book would be on the shelf and it was going to be right next to William Blake. I'm like, Oh boy. So you're up here for a minute and then you realize the work continues, right? Oh, that was funny. I was like, and close to Bishop too.
1:what about your subsequent books? And I'm thinking specifically of Journey to the Beach of the Dead and Looking for the Golf Motel. I remember, talking to you about Journey. your sophomore book and you telling me it was a real struggle, to write it and to finish it. I had great empathy when you said that to me because I too had been struggling and up until very recently was in my own, throes of that. So I was hoping you could share a little about what surprised you about that book, the process of making that book or placing it. what were some of the challenges, you faced when all of a sudden, okay, my first book has won this prestigious prize, this is an amazing press, I'm getting some attention, here comes the next book. What happened?
what is this thing? The sophomore curse, right? I think what happened, I was like, when I went into the MFA program, I was a clean slate. And I think that's really helpful for the creative mind in so many ways, right? Because you take chances, you do things, you're open, you're flowing, but here I am with the first book, Major Prize. I also, by then, I had, left engineering for a little while and was teaching, my first teaching job. A brief
1:time.
Yeah, in Connecticut.
1:Connecticut.
suddenly, I knew how to write a poem, I'm teaching it, I have this book, and it's this thing of having to top yourself, I got much more. project oriented at one point this book was going to be about my transition from engineering into poetry it was called something like Bridge of Tongues. It sounds horrible. I was going to write about bridges across the world and cause I'm the bridge and I'm the bridge builder and I bridge two worlds and great idea. It was going to win the Pulitzer Prize. No, the Nobel Prize. It was going to do amazing things in the world. Meanwhile, I was writing these poems that didn't belong in the manuscript. And throwing them in a drawer. when I had a draft of the manuscript, I sent it to Ted, I told Chadzie, no, I sent it to Cam, I was like, no, it's not there. And then I realized this really sucks. It's all like idea driven, right? enforced. And so I'd looked at all those old poems. I was running away from myself. That's what's part of it. I was like, I don't want to write about any more palm trees or pork. I am not Cuban anymore. I'm so erudite now. I'm a poet. So that was one big lesson. Don't run away from yourself. I ran away from that obsession, that question of home that was born in me in that first class. And of course I took out those old poems. what were they about? It had been a lot of traveling and it was all about questioning place and home and identity again. so the idea of home, but it was a different variation on the theme of more of a cosmopolitan sense of longing and searching and thinking about what that really means, universally. so I ended up pulling those poems together and, pretty much tossing everything from the first draft and that's what the book became, which are, directions to the beach of the dead. the whole section of that is travel poems or begins with the travel poems and circles back to Miami in a different way, Revisiting the sense of home now in a different way as an adult, as someone who's already been to Cuba, as someone who's already contemplated the earlier stages of identity formation when it comes to those issues of place and belonging. and then it got placed in a couple places, I learned my lesson and said, I'd never write a book like that again, Richard. if this is the way it's going to be, I'm not writing anymore. for my third book, I started trusting the process more and not white knuckling it I said, you know what? Your subconscious is going to know what to do,
4:you're
let it lead you. Don't lead it so much. And so what I did with third book and what I do now is I'll just write for a while. take out the poems and look, Oh, that's interesting. What's happening, Richard. I talked to myself in that way and then put it away and just let it seep in and then put, Take another badge. Eventually I put all the poems together and see what, it's time to write a book, it's time to put a book together and see if I have one. And it's so much more pleasant to do it that way. and I've learned that I'm not a speedy writer and that's just the way I am. I have a five year gestation period. it's the curse of being published early is that every time I finish a book, I have nothing left.
1:Because everything goes into the book.
Every poem from grad school went into the first book. that second book was a very big lesson. Any art is really surrender, right? Surrender to the self and not worry about it. it gets difficult, ironically, as you become more successful. after the big gig at Obama's inauguration, I'm terrified about the Shaboom because they don't get attention. I'm like, what if it sucks, it's like you're more under the spotlight and the ego and the pressure gets even worse. Same issue at another scale.
1:That kind of perfectly segues into my next question, which is to address the role and hindrance of ambition as a poet. I read somewhere that being a famous poet is like being a famous mushroom. I just love that quote so much because it drains poets of our own self importance and reminds us about the microscopic sliver that we live in, in the daily world. So you started to address this and I'm hoping you can expand a bit about the role of ambition in your own creative process, what are some of its benefits, but then what are some of its pitfalls? And then, can you think about that within the context of being a Latine poet? how can it propel us, and how can it harm us?
and I think that has become, maybe it was always, I don't want to be one of those people that looks back, it was better back then, but, I think maybe it is because of social media and all that. There is more of a pressure of creating persona and ambition and how many likes did that get? like things like this, how, what can I do next? do, call attention to myself and my work. it's a constant lesson that I have to remember, exactly who said I'm a famous mushroom, right? The level of attention I received because of the presidential inauguration was mind blowing, mind altering, it was very isolating in an interesting way because who are you going to, there's only five people that have ever experienced that moment, and there's only three of us alive now, you can't call, we can't call Alex and say Hey, Alex, remember last time you wrote a poem for Obama? What was that like? So in a weird way, it was this great ambition, but it was also so isolating that became very humbling in some ways. and I was aware that what I'm experiencing right now is not what most poets experiences have been or may never be. and that's fine too. that was part of a really big negotiation, in that space. I don't know that it belongs only to poetry, but, we're always wondering if you're a real artist, you're always going to have to maintain some space of vulnerability, right? I'm questioning now at this age that was almost like over 10 years ago. There were, there's students in mind that were, Five years old, 10 years old or younger when I had that moment. So I'm wondering how relevant I am, how relevant my work is in terms of Latinx writing, I see that my students are undergoing a different kind of experience, That's not my sort of Cuban American, hyphenated American experience. they're fluid in so many ways, not just gender and sexuality, but also culturally. their struggle or their writing has more dimension to it than what I experienced. I'm still wondering my relevance and all that. I don't know that it ever goes away. I think it's, I think it can be healthy. I think it'd be debilitating. Oh, the only thing that saves me. is to always understand that the only reason I really write in the world, is for those five minutes at your desk or on your writing pad when everything disappears and you are in touch with something divine that makes you feel like life is worth living and that you discover something brand new about yourself, about the world you live in, about a memory, about people in your life. And that's ultimately the only satisfying thing, I know it sounds cliche, but all those accolades, they just come and go. but the flip side is we want them too, right? so I'm not going to say Oh, I don't want to peel a turd. what a friend of mine was talking about, the success treadmill, right? you're on this treadmill and You got, 10 miles now. You want 20 miles, then you want and it just keeps on ramping up and up and it, I was just having a conversation with someone I can't mention who's a Pulitzer Prize winner. I'm like, yeah, I'm in the same boat. yeah, we both had set the same metric. Campbell always said, worry about the things you can control and don't worry about the rest, what can I work on my work? You can't control that other stuff. And what else did he used to say to, or he used to say, something like do whatever you want, there's no money in poetry, Just experiment, go out there, do whatever you want, because at the end of the day he said
1:it was the ultimate freedom because it had no currency attached to it except for a claim.
I've always remembered that too, right? there's that sense of, why am I really doing this? in some ways that's a blessing for poetry that we can be famous mushrooms. It was funny because my husband, Mark, he's too funny. He tries to pull the Obama card to get a dinner table or get me in an emergency room.
4:would say
Who's inaugural poet? I'm like, they're like, what does inaugural poet mean to most people? I say, if you're going to see a presidential inaugural poet from 2013, maybe you'll get a table and pray that they're not 20 years old because they won't even remember or pray that they even saw the inauguration. But it's hilarious. you're totally anonymous. you wouldn't appeal to prize in poetry. And so good at grocery store.
2:I
1:love that eponymity. I love it. I can't imagine.
Keeps you humble.
1:nothing could be more horrible to me than being recognized in that kind of fame. it would just overwhelm me completely.
And you, I think, you're right. I think, there was a while there where I was losing it because there was nobody to talk to.
1:And you were everywhere. You were on CNN. I remember turning on CNN. I'm like, there's Rick, you were everywhere.
Here in a cart. I remember sometime they would ask me, what would you like in your dressing room, Mr. Blanc? no point has ever been asked. And I finally got tired of saying nothing. So I would say, cheese zits at San Pellegrino to like, high brow, low brow, so I wouldn't look like a snob or, limos picking you up and I've been in touch with her with Amanda, Amanda Gorman, the presidential novel poet for Biden, who I thought I got a lot of attention. That was crazy, right? And she was young. I was 44 when that happened. yeah, I often think of it in terms of other artists too, that's one little microscope of can you imagine like Lady Gaga or something like that? And so I've learned to really appreciate artists that stick to their art and Don't let the fame, and you see those that go by the wayside, right? The one hit wonder kind of things, but like when you see a, whether that's a singer or an actor or a painter or anything, that they stick, the art is, it's the plumb line. It's what keeps you going. It's what keeps you grounded. It's what keeps you centered.
1:I want to transition a little now to how your personal life informs your creative choices. Somewhere around the Gulf Motel book, you begin to address your personhood as a gay man. What happened around that time that pointed you in that direction, or why did you decide to open that door into your life. to share your poems talk about that part of your life, which is something you had not done in your creative work, up until that point. was it any one catalytic, moment, or was it more gradual,
No, it was cruel. I think it was pretty sudden. And then, of course, in retrospect, you realize what happened or why that happened, not necessarily during the process. but there was a journey with that. I think in retrospect, before I addressed the issue of identity, in terms of my identity as a gay man, I had to do more work on the cultural piece of it. I wanted to discover more about, my Cubaness in a way that was more foundational because that was affecting me when I was 45 days old, like that was something that needed, needed more attention through the work. in the second book, I. I do have, gay love poems, except I kept them on, gender neutral. And I just put, I dedicated it to just with initials. only because it wasn't afraid of, I just thought it would distract attention from what I was trying to do in that book, which was finding a kind of home and love. I didn't know what story to tell I'm a gay man. So what? saying you're a gay man is like saying I'm a human being, every life is different. There's no two gay men stories that are the same. I didn't know what I wanted to say about it. I didn't know how to frame it. I didn't know what I was curious about. I just left it unaddressed cause I didn't know. but it was part of what was eventually coming down the pipeline. I realized, because I thought there were two separate issues, and I realized, in the sense of safe space, right? In the sense of after going through the coming out process, realizing that you have to build a whole brand new community, or add to your community. to create, those people that can support and understand you. All right. you have to renegotiate the idea of relationship of friendships. Anyway, the idea of life, of course, this is another kind of home that I've had to negotiate. It's just not geographical, it's a psychological home that is really thematically aligned with. my grandmother was the actual catalyst, which was, that and a lot of therapy. because I realized what I call today, my cultural sexuality, A lot of what I wanted to talk about was the sexuality in the particular context of a Cuban family, Or a Cuban identity or a Cuban culture. all those nuances of machismo, but also what's particular in my family. and then my grandmother, who was a very homophobic woman and was my primary caretaker, became a way to tell that story.
1:You write about her with a lot of complexity, so it's a lot of pain a lot of deep pain, but there's also a lot of warmth and humor, and those are some of the poems I really value because so much is roiling around in the same pot. you're not trying to put a villain hat on her and you're also not trying to make her, the ultimate angel.
the abuelita poem.
1:you're really just being honest about that experience.
that was a way to tell a story. That was one of your catalysts. One of the ways, okay, I have a unique story to tell that I can own and that belongs to me. And, we know as the saying goes, The universal is in the specific. So I found something specific that I could tell the story with.
1:I also have sensed, in all of your work, when you write about your family, particularly your father, I sense undercurrents of a very, complex relationship inside of those poems. they are not written with the same directness that you write the poems about your grandmother. I was hoping that you could speak to the choices we make, particularly as Latine writers, about how much of ourselves we choose to lay out on the page. what belongs to us, and what should we feel compelled to share, if anything at all?
it's interesting, because, I think I've gotten a little bit of a pass with that, only because, my father died when I was 22, I didn't really have an adult relationship with him. by the time I started writing about my grandmother and I didn't do this consciously, but she had, she was older and eventually did pass in the middle of that third book that you were talking about. my mother, doesn't read English. so there's a lot of, things that I'm not. I have this question not only with Latinx writers, but like people that are writing about family in general are like, what can I say or not say? I feel like I've gotten a little bit of a pass on that. I'm not writing about traumatic stuff, but I will say the way I frame it or the way I think about it or the way it motivates me to tell their stories, so to speak, or through my lens, is that part of, I think I may have learned this from Campbell too, but part of my motivation is this idea of being an emotional historian, Part of why I write about them is to honor, to make sure their stories don't get lost for my parents, my larger Cuban American or Cuban exile community. And also for my art generation, we go through a very particular experience that I wanted to document emotionally, Things that are not going to be in a newspaper article or a magazine. So that's part of what, what motivates me and telling their stories. the other thing is, I think, and I don't know if this happens with your work, but I'm not saying anything verbatim, I'm taking the emotional core of a snippet of something that I remember or something that my parents have told me or even my own travels to Cuba. and really exercising a kind of liberty and imagination to build a story around that, right? not a story in terms of a narrative. I feel like they're more like portraits than any, feel like I'm letting anything out of the bag or anything like that. But I think other writers may have to think about that a little bit more than I have.
1:for you, it isn't really a conscious choice. It's more just instinctual. What feels right to you.
Yeah. And I think different family members have different things. writing about my grandmother was the most urgent emotionally for me. the process of writing about her, not only in portrait, but in the memoir, allowed me to hate her, because I thought my grandmother was normal, that kind of verbal abuse was every day. Allowed me to hate her, allowed me to forgive her and eventually love her she was my best friend as well as my arch enemy in some ways. With my mother, I think part of what motivates me is, healing her loss of pain. I don't want to say that I'm a healer, but in my own way, even though she doesn't read the work, it's important for me to figure it out for her, my mother left her entire family behind in Cuba, including her parents, every sibling, et cetera, et cetera, all for the sake of my brother and me. And also, for a better life for all of us. that kind of pain and sorrow, I felt since I was born, she left seven months pregnant with me. So I was already feeling all that. I think that's part of what I wanted to do with her, with my father in particular, because again, he died when I was young. I try to recreate him. I'll take a little snippet of something that he said or some memory about him and think about what his story might've been or who was that person that I never got to ask. I'm exploring who that is in the poem, who I think now as an adult, as I look back on it. almost like an archaeologist trying to have a relationship with him through poetry
1:that's interesting that you're trying to recreate him. Wow.
make him alive.
1:Yeah. So you can continue that relationship you missed out on. That's really beautiful.
But it is a treasure. It's interesting how we treat. family, of course, not everybody writes about family. that is one of my inspirations for the obvious reason of the obsession and question of home, there's nothing more basic than your family when it comes to that question. so it's always been there. just when I think I don't have any more family poems left, I'll remember some things, all of a sudden. And, and a poem comes to me. it'll always be some kind of inspiration and a driving force in my work.
1:So your earlier poems, really focused, almost exclusively on your, singular immigrant experience. Then came the event, as you call it. the Obama inauguration where you were asked to read and write a poem that would reflect all of us, right? All of the humans living in this country and beyond because, that's something broadcast all over the world. And I watched that live in my living room, in my desk chair, rolled right up to the television set, which I never do. it was an emotional moment for me. I saw someone with a very similar, ordinary background from the same neighborhood. someone like myself and so many of our friends in Miami's immigrant communities. now you had the attention of the world. It made me feel for the first time in my life that poetry has a powerful place in the wider public discourse. after that, I felt like the net of your work widened. into all of these different socio, cultural considerations, political considerations. I know you've been invited to, commemorate events with your poems, really history. with your poems, Sandy Hook, the inaugural poem, the Boston Marathon bombing, marriage equality. How does it feel as a person to suddenly have that megaphone to speak out, about mass shootings, about the endless violences that are inflicted? on people by our systems and by each other. has that felt daunting to you? exciting to have that platform? Are you concerned about missteps? It's a great responsibility, this mantle that you're carrying now. how do you navigate that?
So I'll say I had the same response as you did. Like you said, we're famous mushrooms, right? So even in the midst of all this happening, I thought I'd go to Washington, read the poem, come back and walked it on, right? Just get the mail. Nobody reads poetry, right? of course what happened was very different. one of the most touching things was the tens of thousands of emails and letters from people saying, I saw myself and everybody from gay military people to Every kind of immigrant, you can imagine people from all across the world saying they finally felt represented in some ways That, oh my god, a poem can do that, it was like, I didn't know a poem could do that. it's funny because we're so not well educated for the most part, a lot of people will call it my speech. It's no, a speech will probably not do that. it's interesting that we are famous marshals in Amoeba Beach poetry, but like Pinsky said, that favorite poem project that he did, Ask 10 people and 9 out of 10 people will have a favorite poem. Like they remember all their life, right? So poetry's there and it's not there, right? It's there in different ways. But yeah, that really caught me by surprise. Waves of that and has to do with work and also in other ways. one is I realized that for most people, this is the first time they actually saw a living poet, contemporary poet. I got involved in poetry education with the Academy of American poets. Because I never had access to that kind of art or humanities education. And so I work a lot with them to work with teachers and educators to make sure that students get a good experience with poetry and help teachers do that. The larger thing was shifting in the writing. it wasn't like, Oh, I gotta do this now because I'm, presidential knocker book, it was just a natural, just when, and this happens with every book, just when I think I've exhausted the theme of home, I'm like, I got nothing left, sorry, then I realized, oh my God, home is this huge question to everybody else in this country as well and across the world. I gave myself permission to write poems that I never thought I would write in my entire life, because for the most part, it was the autobiographical lyrical lens, I realized, oh, this is a question that's worth asking for all of us, And so that's how to love a country came
4:to
And a lot of that wasn't also conscious. A lot of the poems in there were, let me write a poem for the pulse shooting amongst the others that you mentioned, but it also gave me this great sense that poetry can, I don't want to say matter, but poetry can have at least a place. And I think it's grown over the years. I think, I don't know if you agree, there's suddenly poems at governor's inaugurations and poems at this and poems at that. so that was really exciting for me and how blessed am I that I have this platform not only to do that, but also reaching into, I've read at the FDIC, I'd become this poetry ambassador in other ways, right? Like where I get to turn on people to this let them shed their fear or misconceptions of it. so that felt like part of the mission as well, the beauty of that task or that charge. but it was scary, like you were saying too, because I'd never written those kinds of poems that was part of the aesthetic challenge. How do I still maintain that sort of intimate lyrical voice and yet? Edge out a little bit more into social culture. I like that word more than social political, this idea of how do we wrap ourselves around these identities both historically and where we are right now as a country. it was just like the ultimate biggest home the country. how do we, what is a country, How do you love it? what does that even mean? Especially a country this huge. that was part of it. Of course, the fear of that, and I'll be honest with you, we never, back in the day, nobody teaches you how to write. even today, they don't teach, they don't teach you how to write occasional poems. It's not a thing. I actually teach a course seminar now. put yourself out there, write a poem for your Senator. It's important. don't wait for people to come to poetry, put poetry in their face. the balance of understanding that this is now reaching more into the traditions of spoken word performance poetry and That poetry is a political, social force, right? That's something we're not prepared with. nobody teaches that in our MFA program. so that was scary because you said missteps. I'm like, are these poems going to be respected By the academy, the pedigree I come from, the MFA programs, it's still a little fuzzy for me, but what I've landed on is you know what? I can do that lyrical intimate family poem, and I can do the big, I'm not going to judge them because they're different things, right?
1:And then
they serve different purposes and that's okay. Are some of my occasional poems or commemorative poems the best in the world? I don't know. maybe not. Or I said, not best compared to the other work. maybe not. History will tell, but I think this work is important as much as the intimate work. And I'll say one more thing, but it's work. in some ways, it's even more draining. Then some of the personal stuff, the really personal stuff, because you have this other weight on you, which is not, Oh, this is my family or my life. Like you have this larger concern of what does this mean to us? What is this moment? How do I make this art? And not just a soapbox thing or something, ordinary, right? the new poems and the new and selected, I actually had became very small for now. I had to take a step back and okay, I need to do me now for a little while. and I'm eager to get back into that other arena, because again, I think it's important, but it is interesting that has been one of the things I never thought I'd experience There is that weight that you're carrying an additional weight that's not just your personal story. and again, the missteps like, do I have a right to talk about this or not? can I write a poem about race? Obviously a white presenting person, so a lot of other things to circle around.
1:I'd love it. I really appreciate that word you use, purpose. it's a way of, especially with the occasion poems, pushing back against perfectionism, which we all can succumb to. understanding that there are larger, forces at work and, that the poem is needed in other ways where it doesn't have to focus as much on craft, I'm not saying you don't craft your poem, your occasional poems. I'm just saying there's other concerns going on. And to me, it sounds like the other concerns are, concerns of the heart. you're trying to speak to people and show empathy and care and that should actually, override anything else when it comes to an occasion poem, thinking of something like, the Boston Marathon bombing people. needed to hear words of comfort, they didn't need to focus on your line break,
that's powerful.
1:It's important work.
it's not that they're not crafty, it's just following a different aesthetic. it's making me think, you allowed me that to write, write the poem that you want to write. And I'm also thinking that part of why I stepped into that is cultural. you and I both share that in most every other country in the world, except the United States, poetry is more of the day to day, It's part of the folklore. it's like your mom's talking, you're quoting, I'll say my decent, you're born. So I love that poetry matters in, I've seen that in other cultures, in my own culture, that poetry. has, and it's okay, they accept that scale, right? That it's not, oh, it's highbrow or lowbrow. They just, it's a scale. It's just this way. It's like, where do you want, where do you want your poem or where do you need to come to poetry Is it in this high level of academic world? And that's perfectly valid too yeah, that Boston Strong thing, I was like, Oh my God, imagine TD Stadium full of Bostonians drinking beer for two hours. I'm like, they're just going to blow me off the stage. You could hear a pin drop and part of his portraits, like prayer. I wish there were more moments like the inauguration, just for me before. Poets in general, everywhere, maybe that's something to think about, you can't wait every four years or eight years for an inaugural poet to make a splash in the world of poetry.
1:Yeah, but I think something you said earlier is really valid. The idea that poetry's presence has grown in our everyday lives. When we were in grad school, that was not the case. And now it's everywhere. People are excited to write poems. They want to read poems, they want to, share their poems, there's a whole, subculture of Instagram poetry, it's everywhere in a way that it was not when we were starting out writing, and that's exciting to me. Yeah. And I think that you're a big part of that. increasing that visibility, that prominence, that power, that we can, share through language, right? Through the creative art of language. I guess my last question is going back right to the beginning, because we're almost out of time, but I wanted to just talk a little bit about your teaching, in the MFA program. I even wrote in my notes, oh, he's teaching in the same classroom that we used to sit in. that weird paneled ceiling. Is that still there? Oh my gosh, that's funny. that just feels so wild, but also perfectly symmetrical to me. I would love that. I would want you to address some of the challenges as an artist of full time teaching and maybe what you might want to tell a poet who's beginning to consider how they're going to support themselves in regards to becoming, economically successful. Self sufficient, and I know you taught right after the MFA, but it was only for a short time, and you went back to teaching in community settings, doing public speaking, and all kinds of different things, And I didn't take that route either. I remember sitting in your apartment in Miami beach and saying, there's a job teaching composition at FIU, but then there's this journalism fellowship. which one do you see me in? And you looked at me and you said the journalist.
2:And I was
1:like,
2:yeah,
1:he's probably
2:right,
1:Yeah. So thanks for that. I'm just curious, now that you're really deep in it, how does it support your artistic practice or how does it get in the way of it. I don't think that's something that people talk a lot about because it's very taboo, but I would just love to hear this reflection.
in the last question or answer, all of a sudden I'm living the dream. I am now a writer, a poet of all things that can earn a complete living just off my work and my appearances. Maxine Kuhman had a term called PoBiz, and suddenly, worlds of poetry that already existed, negotiating contracts and fees and poetry became a business. I have a corporation, a business for my livelihood, not to make a million dollars, but that doesn't happen for most migrants that was really a little weird too, like that, I wouldn't say it got in the way it, it did get in the way, but of course it's more about just catching things. I try to spend my day, this is even before teaching, like my nine to five. Poe biz, flights, contracts, republication rights, agent call. And I still, like when I had a day job, I try to keep my night for the creative and I try to put everything back. And I always, Was used to that.
1:say you would write on Saturdays
Saturday is still my favorite.
1:Yeah.
sometimes I'm a night owl writer too. Sometimes I start writing at 10 or 11 o'clock at night. so I had to re-identify that process.'cause then all got, would get all mixed up. and they're two separate things. with teaching kind of a similar, situation, I try to reserve time for his teaching and understanding that it is its own art form, that it can be consuming not because of this workload, but. If you're a teacher like me that in the program maybe that's why it's a great fit. I'm thinking they're in my head, you're their poetry. some of the stuff that's going on in their life. And sometimes I'll just email him, we need to have a chat because I'm feeling this.
1:you're doing it right, though. If you're going to do it right, that's what I go in full,
I'm like my grandmother's antithesis. I'm the kind of abuelita that kills you with love. I'm like, when were you absent today? Is everything okay? I email them when I get home. that can be consuming. I was like, okay, Richard, at this point, it's either you or them. You got to take it easy. So it's always been a negotiation, but I will say in terms of that, the more important question I think that you were asking was, for those thinking about how am I going to earn a living with writing? How does that work? teaching was the ideal. I think that ship has sailed. you need eight books to get a teaching job now. that's the bad news. I think they're also, So many other places where you can be involved with poetry, nonprofit organizations, small presses. this has flourished. When we were in our, there were like five places that you could get your poetry published. Right now there's all sorts of, organizations that deal with literature and poetry and places where there's been a growth in that as well. I think that's something to look at, for students that want to do this all question, not just for creative writing, but English majors as well. There's writing involved anywhere, like
1:in my
engineering firm, we had two English majors working in the marketing department because most of the engineers do not know how to put two sentences together. at the end of the day, every organization needs some kind of level of language creative writing. I tell them to look for opportunities in that. One thing that I went through personally, because I didn't get an undergraduate degree in English when I was in engineering and because I've been an engineer for most of my adult life. A practicing engineer. I just felt I'm not a real poet.
1:You still have imposter
syndrome? There's maybe it's a wish that I, my students know, all this mythology, I'm like, I don't know who, what does this poem about, I feel like I have parts missing. but I think it is, I guess it's ipo, but it's more like the stereotypes that we buy into what a poet is or what an engineer is. and I think maybe this generation understands they're a little more fluid in that way. Like,
1:why have I not read all of Chaucer's works in the middle English
Yeah. Twice
1:Yeah, exactly.
and I always, and again, I'm teaching at FYU, a lot of these kids are like me. they're working class commuter kids. Their parents are probably not even really. on board with them studying English. And one thing I was telling, never feel like you're less than that. You're not following your dream. If you're doing something to support that dream. And that's true of almost anybody's autobiography. and I accepted that. I realized that there was actually in some ways a great balance that went on to get back to where it began with this, day job. Build a bridge, write poetry, and neither the twain shall meet. when I was having a bad poetry day, I'd dive into engineering. when I was having a bad engineering day, I'd write poetry at work.
4:that
can actually be healthy for your creativity. don't feel like you have to get the job solely doing that writing thing. if that's what you love and you do get that's perfectly fine too. But never feel, that you're less than by having another career I say this, my engineering and I loved engineering. I wasn't doing it because I loved doing it, but it was also, this is what I do to feed my addiction. And it was more lucrative than even teaching. So at some point I'd stop teaching and went back to engineering for that as well. Cause it set up my life for writing in a better way. I do advise them, to think about that as well, that there is a certain practicality you have to think of find something you like doing that you can help you feed your addiction, but don't, and I always tell them, but you so easy to lose sight of that vision. You have to prop up your life to support that. So I refused promotions in my engineering job. I told them at one point, listen, I just want to work 30 hours a week. You're going to pay me. A full salary. I had earned that and I want to get paid by the hour so I can take off writing when I need to.
4:Yeah.
I could have easily gotten into senior partner and forgotten my writing. So that's the caveat I tell them. You can do that, but don't forget Where do you want to be? What's your ultimate goal, right? Or ultimate drink?
1:Thank you so much for talking with me today. This was wonderful.
Certainly my pleasure.