Blanco displays remarkable empathy and understanding of women. In his poem, “The House of the Virgin Mary,” he compares the Mother of God to his mother: “It is difficult/to imagine the mother of a savior living/in such a simple house of hewn stones “How many nights/did she lie in bed staring at the threads/of the window shears in the moonlight, /praying the rosary, mother to mother, /woman to woman, waiting for a miracle, /or giving thanks forever and ever amen?” Blanco recounts that his mother left her mother, every aunt and uncle, eight brothers and sisters, her nephews and nieces in Cuba to emigrate to the US. Richard and his brother grew up feeling that incredible loss and longing, the sense of the sacrifice his mother made to give him and his brother a better life—many, many poems are about her.
Today, Blanco divides his time between Bethel, Maine, and Concord, Massachusetts. He moved to Maine with his partner, Mark Neveu, a research scientist and avid “snow bunny.” Being with someone outside his culture is odd and wonderful. Plumbing the unknown and discovering oneself in the other is amazing. The small ski town in Maine, miles away from his Cuban Miami upbringing, is conducive to writing. But, “you can’t write poetry eight hours a day—you’d go insane!” Blanco has involved himself in the planning board in Bethel in an effort to create a sense of belonging, translating “the emotional landscape of community into the physical landscape of community.”
In the three years since the 2013 inauguration, Blanco has seen little of his adopted hometown. In fact, he’s been traveling almost nonstop since his public poetry reading at the second Obama inauguration, bringing poetry to medical staff at the Mayo Clinic, accountants at the Federal Reserve, and engineers at government and engineering firms. His good friend, Sandra Cisneros, Mexican-American author of the memoir, House on Mango Street, gave him the courage to tell his own story. It was one of the first memoirs he read in high school that told the story of an immigrant growing up in an extended family in a mainstream American city. Blanco and Cisneros presented together at an event in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, in the summer of 2015, and renewed their deeply abiding friendship, nurtured over the years—allies in the lexicon of Latino literature.
Richard Blanco (R) and partner of 15 years,
Dr. Mark Neveu, on Glacier Hike in Iceland.
Photo by Pete Souza
His favorite poet is Elizabeth Bishop. He was surprised to find himself in someone he didn’t expect—not just who, but what and how she writes: complex, telling a story through rich imagery. Though a woman born in Worchester, MA, in a way she was an exile all her life, living in Canada, Brazil, and America. “I think I feel like an exile every day of my life. Many different layers—exile from myself, being who I am, separate from family. The world is becoming more fluid. Living in different cultures is the underlying universal story of me and my parents—exile. I’ve moved a lot. I feel very much like an immigrant – different foods, regional history, community. I’m always engaged in that space of the mind that seeks out the sense of home and identity,” Blanco explained.
Blanco sees poetry as the bridge between people because, “no matter what culture we’re from, we’re all operating from the same set of core human emotional denominators— love, hate, betrayal, loss, grief, hurt, anger, redemption and reconciliation.”
In fact, Blanco was commissioned to write a poem for the re-opening of the US Embassy in Cuba in August of 2015. He wrote a poem, entitled, “Cosas Del Mar” (Matters of the Sea): “The sea doesn’t matter what matters is this: that we all belong to the sea between us “No one is other to the other to the sea.” This poem begins to heal the rift bigger than the ninety miles of sea that separates Havana from Miami ever since the US severed diplomatic relations with Castro’s Cuba in 1961.
Blanco crosses boundaries in his fundamental human drive for home, belonging, and becoming. Many have told him, including his Polish-German partner, Mark Neveu, of fifteen years, that the abuela in his memoir reminds them of their own grandmothers, their own families. It is this common humanity that enables Blanco to at least try to tap into something larger. “What is West Side Story if not Romeo and Juliet told all over again? Human motives and emotions represent the same universal element that we all share.”
Richard Blanco and Carole King at Boston Strong Event.
Photo by Alissa Hessler
Blanco understands the practical constraints that everyone has; he does not view having a job as being a sellout. Most artists have to have another means of support to make a living. But he would advise, “Do not lose sight of what you want to do as an artist. Make decisions that support your ultimate goal; I turned down promotions so I could have energy for my work. Make life decisions, visioning your art and building your life around that. Most importantly, work. Work and keep on working. Art is not just something that happens; it’s something you MAKE happen.”
“Most importantly, work. Work and keep on working. Art is not just something that happens; it’s something you MAKE happen.”
Richard Blanco
Carolina De Robertis: From Uruguay with Love
Carolina De Robertis: From Uruguay with Love
Award-Winning Novelist: Gods of Tango, Perla, The Invisible Mountain
Best 10 Books for a First Novel by Booklist, Recipient of Italy’s Regium Julii Prize
2012 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship
Translator, Faculty, MFA, Literary Translation, Creative Writing Department at
San Francisco State University
More than a courageous author, Carolina De Robertis has braved rejection from her Uruguayan family of origin. In 2002, when De Robertis married a woman, African-American filmmaker Pamela Harris, her parents cut her out of their lives. Becoming pregnant and bearing two children did not soften her parents in any way. “In fact, they dug their heels in even more. I suffered what Sarah Schulman has called, ‘familial homophobia,’ and had to mourn my parents, grieve the loss as though it were a death, though my parents are both alive.” When her father’s siblings tried to approach Carolina’s father to encourage him to mend relations, he responded by cutting off contact with them.
De Robertis is of many countries, yet an outsider in all of them. Born in England in 1975 and raised in England, Switzerland and the US by Uruguayan parents, she always has an “insider-outsider perspective, a double lens, if you will.” She identifies as queer—very much so, yet is also married with children which can be seen as ho-hum suburban, picking the kids up from school and taking them to Kung Fu.
A self-described bookworm, De Robertis always had her “nose in a book” all her life. “One of the ways I became a reader was in Switzerland, between the ages of five and ten, I was ostracized by classmates and teachers—so I devised a way to survive. Reading gave me a freedom and world expansion that never left me. I just love books. I love language. I love people. Novels—I’m fascinated by people and in love with humanity. I am a curious mix: I love to be alone in a room and love to go out in the world and talk, especially about books.”
Carolina