Vickram: You are SO brilliant !! Gordon ( from MYC) In a message dated 1/22/2013 1:59:00 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, vg...@yahoo.co.uk writes:
President Obama's second inaugural speech immediately caught the attention for its open acknowledgement of lgbt people and their struggles. His use of the words "Seneca Falls, Selma, Stonewall" was just brilliant for their alliterative rhythm and the way they acknowledge three immense civil rights struggles, for women's rights (Seneca Falls was the site of the first major meeting devoted to womens rights in the US), for black Americans (Selma was a key battlefield in the civil rights movement) and Stonewall (if you don't know what Stonewall was, you shouldn't be on a gay list). Here's an excellent piece from Frank Bruni on the significance of the moment: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/opinion/bruni-a-map-of-human-dignity.html But the other immensely poetic and moving moment was the commemorative poem read out by Richard Blanco. There was a fair amount of cynicism over the choice of Blanco to deliver the inaugural poem. He seemed to fit too many convenient boxes: openly gay, Hispanic, from a working class and immigrant background, and from Florida, a state that just delivered Obama's victory, largely thanks to Cuban Americans like Blanco. And anyway, this sort of writing of poems for special occasions is a sort of impossible task. The Brits have had a specific guy, the Poet Laureate, to do this for ages, and with little memorable to show for it. American Presidents - only Democrats - have enlisted a poet for their inaugurations 4-5 times in the past, and again almost no one remembers their poems, though the picture of an aged Robert Frost delivering his poem for a youthful President Kennedy's inauguration (the first time a poet was asked to do this) was memorable, though it should be noted Frost couldn't read the poem he had written, so he delivered another older one from memory, which probably says it all about the value of such poems-made-to-demand. But Blanco answered all the doubts and sneers about him in the best possible way - by delivering. His poem, 'One Today', may or may not turn out to be memorable over many years, but it certainly fit the moment very well. Using the idea of one day, through things that link all who live it - the sun, the wind, the ground beneath us, the moon and stars - he painted a picture of an America that was familar, yet moving in its familiarity. Its language was plainspoken, yet striking: "pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights, fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows begging our praise." It was personal, where he talked about his parents, and particular, when it talked about the awful killings at Newtown ("the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain/ the empty desks of twenty children marked absent/ today, and forever") and larger when he talked about people working across the country, from manual to office labour: "One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane so my brother and I could have books and shoes." Blanco's delivery was pretty good too. He resisted the temptation to grandstand or go hammy (the awful invocation delivered by that homophobic pastor at Obama's first inaugural comes to mind), but spoken simply, yet with resonance. The moment he said ''Breathe" and did, was a skirting a bit close to a bit too much, but it was balanced by the Spanish intonation he gave 'Colorado' when he mentioned the river. It wasn't so short as to pass unmemorably, but not too long to be tedious. For an impossible job, he came as close as one could to pulling it off. I suppose, since this is a gay list, its ok to mention that it helped that he's really hunky, in a very pleasantly real, not movie star or model way. Its worth checking out his website and this picture gallery on it: http://www.richard-blanco.com/photo-gallery/richard-blanco-photos.php I realise most people who look at it are going to click on the fourth pic in the fourth row and no wonder - poets aren't supposed to have arms like this! But take a look at the second picture in the second row, where he's shown in his graduation robes (still looking handsome) between two old people. He hasn't captioned his pix, but it seems likely that these aren't his parents (that's the next pic), but his grandparents. Which means that the lady on his right is his grandmother who he wrote about later in a very intense piece. This grandmother was completely homophobic and made his life hell when he was growing up, because she saw he was different, an effeminate, probably gay kid. Her verbal abuse of him was continual and brutal and something many of us might relate to, perhaps not from grandmothers, who tend to be doting of male children in India, but older uncles and more distant relatives, who still made brutal comments when we were growing up. Here's a link to the piece, which is really worth reading and some passages: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-blanco/making-a-man-out-of-me_b_250702 4.html "I am seven, I think. My grandmother tells me I eat wrong: "Don't use a straw, ever. Los Hombres don't drink soda with a straw. Now throw dat away and sit up." I look wrong: "Dios mío, you nosin but bones. Dat's why the boys at school push you around. Even a girl could beat you up. Now finish your steak, or else." My friends are all wrong: "I no taking you to dat Enrique's house neber again. He's a Mamacita's boy. I don't want you playing with him. I don't care what you say, those GI Joes he has are dolls. Do you want to play with dolls; is dat what you want señorita?" " Sound familiar? She would also tell him once ""Better to having a granddaughter who's a whore than a grandson who is un pato faggot like you. Understand?" Even when he does something she approves of, learning how to ride a bike, and she rewards him by making his favourite food, she still almost at once abuses him: "But that very night she shoos my cat Ferby off my lap: "Stop dat. You looking like una niña sitting there petting dat thing. Why don't you like dogs?" Apparently, I have the wrong pet, too." As many of us can understand, this sort of treatment, even if done from tough love perspectives, can be devastating as you grow up, and Blanco acknowledges the effect it had on him. But he notes too that he learned to deal with and grow, becoming a contemplative, quiet kid, who would find in this the roots of his poetry. And he is generous enough to give a hint of a personal tragedy that might have links to why his grandmother treated him the way she did, and how he could still be with her, holding her hand as she died. Its a tremendous piece, and reading it one can't be surprised he pulled off what he did with his inauguration poem. Vikram PS: If you don't have time to read the piece, just check this video where he delivers a poem called "Queer Theory according to my Grandmother'' that encapsulates much of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4juDXCNtH0
