Uploaded November 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
Richard Blanco, “Poems to Change the World”
Monday, 8 April 2019, 19:30 EST
Lesley University
Washburn Auditorium
10 Phillips Place
Cambridge, MA 02138
Sponsors: Mosse Lectures, Mosse Foundation, Lesley University
Moderated by Richard Zauft, Dean of the College of Art and Design, Lesley University
2019 Strauch-Mosse Visiting Artist Lecture: @-lesley/community-engagement/strauch-mosse-visiting-artist-lectures
Richard Blanco:
Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami, Richard Blanco is the fifth presidential inaugural poet in U.S. history.
He is the author of poetry collections Looking for the Gulf Motel, Directions to the Beach of the Dead, and City of a Hundred Fires, and has written the memoirs The Prince of Los Cucuyos: A Miami Childhood, and For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet's Journey.
His latest book of poems, How to Love a Country, was just published.
The Strauch-Mosse Visiting Artist Lecture Series, funded by Lesley University Chair of the Board Hans Strauch and the Mosse Foundation, brings world-renowned artists to campus.
More than a third of Lesley’s undergraduate and graduate students are engaged in the arts, whether through the university’s art and design, creative writing, community arts, or expressive therapies programs. This visiting artist lecture series serves as a catalyst for artistic and cultural inquiry. It reinforces arts integration across our schools. And best of all—it’s free and open to the public.
Excerpt from Lesley University story on Richard Blanco's lecture, by Georgia Sparling:
"Poems to change the world"
Celebrated poet Richard Blanco speaks on immigration, democracy and the impact of public poetry
It wasn’t until Richard Blanco faced a crowd of thousands as the presidential inaugural poet for Barack Obama that he finally saw himself as an American.
“The inauguration was really this culminating moment,” Blanco recalled as he finally realized that “my story as a little chubby gay kid from a working-class immigrant family…that was part of the American story.”
Blanco, then 44, leaned over to his mother on that cold January day in 2013 and said, “Mama, I think we’re finally Americanos.”
Speaking on Monday night as part of the Strauch-Mosse Visiting Artist Lecture Series, Blanco recalled growing up in Miami as the child of Cuban exiles. They were not the stereotypical white family that Blanco envisioned as true Americans, perched on plush couches in their perfect living room. The word “blanco” may mean “white” in Spanish, but that was where the similarities seemed to end.
“Family night at the Blancos always turned into dancing and a lot of spandex,” joked Blanco, not to mention their sofas encased in plastic.
When the poet stepped onto the national platform to read “One Today,” however, he began to realize the transformative power of a poem as it becomes public and finally felt like the American he was.
“Ultimately, something different and magical happens when we do this in community,” Blanco told the audience gathered at Washburn Auditorium. “I don’t think a poem can change the world. I think a poem can change a person and a person can change the world.”
With the 2013 inauguration, Blanco became one of America’s most prominent poets. He has written poems tackling racism, culture, class, immigration and politics in the American context for occasions such as the Boston Marathon bombing. His poems have appeared in numerous publications, including the “Best American Poetry” series, The Nation, The New Republic, and Condé Nast Traveler, along with seven of his own books.
Blanco’s poetry reflects on his experiences and that of his Cuban-born parents, creating space for conversation.
In Blanco’s poem “Mother Country,” published in his 2019 book “How to Love a Country,” he imagines the gut-wrenching emotions of his mother as she leaves her country and asks how we might learn to love our own country if we knew it could be taken away from us.
With “My Father in English,” Blanco writes about his dad’s efforts to learn English in his adopted country, living his entire life in translation.
Richard Blanco, “Poems to Change the World”
Monday, 8 April 2019, 19:30 EST
Lesley University
Washburn Auditorium
10 Phillips Place
Cambridge, MA 02138
Sponsors: Mosse Lectures, Mosse Foundation, Lesley University
Moderated by Richard Zauft, Dean of the College of Art and Design, Lesley University
2019 Strauch-Mosse Visiting Artist Lecture: @-lesley/community-engagement/strauch-mosse-visiting-artist-lectures
Richard Blanco:
Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami, Richard Blanco is the fifth presidential inaugural poet in U.S. history.
He is the author of poetry collections Looking for the Gulf Motel, Directions to the Beach of the Dead, and City of a Hundred Fires, and has written the memoirs The Prince of Los Cucuyos: A Miami Childhood, and For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet's Journey.
His latest book of poems, How to Love a Country, was just published.
The Strauch-Mosse Visiting Artist Lecture Series, funded by Lesley University Chair of the Board Hans Strauch and the Mosse Foundation, brings world-renowned artists to campus.
More than a third of Lesley’s undergraduate and graduate students are engaged in the arts, whether through the university’s art and design, creative writing, community arts, or expressive therapies programs. This visiting artist lecture series serves as a catalyst for artistic and cultural inquiry. It reinforces arts integration across our schools. And best of all—it’s free and open to the public.
Excerpt from Lesley University story on Richard Blanco's lecture, by Georgia Sparling:
"Poems to change the world"
Celebrated poet Richard Blanco speaks on immigration, democracy and the impact of public poetry
It wasn’t until Richard Blanco faced a crowd of thousands as the presidential inaugural poet for Barack Obama that he finally saw himself as an American.
“The inauguration was really this culminating moment,” Blanco recalled as he finally realized that “my story as a little chubby gay kid from a working-class immigrant family…that was part of the American story.”
Blanco, then 44, leaned over to his mother on that cold January day in 2013 and said, “Mama, I think we’re finally Americanos.”
Speaking on Monday night as part of the Strauch-Mosse Visiting Artist Lecture Series, Blanco recalled growing up in Miami as the child of Cuban exiles. They were not the stereotypical white family that Blanco envisioned as true Americans, perched on plush couches in their perfect living room. The word “blanco” may mean “white” in Spanish, but that was where the similarities seemed to end.
“Family night at the Blancos always turned into dancing and a lot of spandex,” joked Blanco, not to mention their sofas encased in plastic.
When the poet stepped onto the national platform to read “One Today,” however, he began to realize the transformative power of a poem as it becomes public and finally felt like the American he was.
“Ultimately, something different and magical happens when we do this in community,” Blanco told the audience gathered at Washburn Auditorium. “I don’t think a poem can change the world. I think a poem can change a person and a person can change the world.”
With the 2013 inauguration, Blanco became one of America’s most prominent poets. He has written poems tackling racism, culture, class, immigration and politics in the American context for occasions such as the Boston Marathon bombing. His poems have appeared in numerous publications, including the “Best American Poetry” series, The Nation, The New Republic, and Condé Nast Traveler, along with seven of his own books.
Blanco’s poetry reflects on his experiences and that of his Cuban-born parents, creating space for conversation.
In Blanco’s poem “Mother Country,” published in his 2019 book “How to Love a Country,” he imagines the gut-wrenching emotions of his mother as she leaves her country and asks how we might learn to love our own country if we knew it could be taken away from us.
With “My Father in English,” Blanco writes about his dad’s efforts to learn English in his adopted country, living his entire life in translation.
