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Homeland of My Body

New and Selected Poems

Author Richard Blanco
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Hardcover
$25.95 US
Beacon Press
On sale Oct 24, 2023 | 216 Pages | 978-0-8070-1297-0
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A rich, accomplished, intensely intimate collection with 2 full sections of new poems bookending Blanco’s selections from his 5 previous volumes

“An engineer, poet, Cuban American . . . his poetry bridges cultures and languages—a mosaic of our past, our present, and our future—reflecting a nation that is hectic, colorful, and still becoming.”—President Joe Biden, conferring the National Humanities Medal on Richard Blanco, 2023

“What a gift, this new gathering of poems from the singular Richard Blanco. A cause for rejoicing!”—Krista Tippett, author of Being Wise and host of On Being

“Blanco’s poems are journeys to a homeland within the heart, a welcome homecoming earned from a lifetime’s wise voyaging.”—Sandra Cisneros

“A triumphant anthem to a rich life in all its ages and awakenings.”—Naomi Shihab Nye

In this collection of over 100 poems, Richard Blanco has carefully selected poems from his previous books that represent his evolution as a writer grappling with his identity, working to find and define “home,” and bookended them with new poems that address those issues from a fresh, more mature perspective, allowing him to approach surrendering the pain and urgency of his past explorations. Pausing at this pivotal moment in mid-career, Blanco reexamines his life-long quest to find his proverbial home and all that it encompasses: love, family, identity and ultimately art itself. In the closing section of the volume, he has come to understand and internalize the idea that “home” is not one place, not one thing, and lives both inside him and inside his art.

The poems range in form, voice, and setting, showcasing his command of craft, but in essence they are one continuous reflection on the existential question at the core of all of Blanco’s poetry: how can we find our place in the world. All are characterized by his keen eye, deep sensibility, and polished craft, without pretense. This volume is a gift to Blanco’s many readers but even more to those who have yet to discover that they can understand, and fall in love with poetry, that a poet can speak to them about his own and their own lives so profoundly, and that this poet, as Barack Obama discovered, can speak for all of us.

Richard Blanco has been justly celebrated for his poetic gifts and his command of the many forms poetry can take, from the finely structured to the prose poem formats. His previous volumes have been praised by Patricia Smith, Eileen Myles, Sandra Cisneros, Elizabeth Alexander, and many others. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and dozens of other publications.
Radiant Beings: New Poems Part 1

The Splintering
—playing god—
Why I Needed To
Until This: An Ekphrastic Ars Poetica
Questioning Villa Vizcaya Museum and Gardens
Radiant Beings: Photos by Joyce Tenneson
—anatomy of light—
To the Artist of the Invisible
Big Wood River
What You Didn’t Let Us Lose
Music in Our Hands
Visiting Elizabeth: A Glosa
What Governs Us
Maine Yet Miami
Upon a Time: Surfside, Miami

From City of a Hundred Fires

América
La Revolución at Antonio’s Mercado
Mango, Number 61
Shaving
Mother Picking Produce
The Silver Sands
324 Mendoza Avenue, #6
Havanasis
Varadero en Alba
El Jagua Resort
Found Letters from 1965: El Año de la Agricultura
El Cucubano
Décima Guajira
Palmita Mía
Palmita Mía

From Directions to the Beach of the Dead

Time as Art in the Eternal City
A Poet in Venice
We’re Not Going to Malta . . .
Somewhere to Paris
Torsos at the Louvre
After Barcelona, in Barcelona
Directions to the Beach of the Dead
Winter of the Volcanoes: Guatemala
Bargaining with a Goddess
Return from El Cerrado
Silent Family Clips
Papá’s Bridge
What’s Love Got to Do?
Visiting Metaphors at South Point
Translation for Mamá
The Perfect City Code
When I Was a Little Cuban Boy
Looking for Blackbirds, Hartford
How Can You Love New York?
No More Than This, Provincetown
Crossing Boston Harbor
Mexican Almuerzo in New England
where it begins—where it ends

From Looking for the Gulf Motel

Looking for The Gulf Motel
Betting on America
Taking My Cousin’s Photo at the Statue of Liberty
The Island Within
Practice Problem
El Florida Room
Afternoons as Endora
Queer Theory: According to My Grandmother
Maybe
Thicker Than Country
Killing Mark
Cooking with Mamá in Maine
My Father in My Hands
Since Unfinished

From How to Love a Country

Como Tú / Like You / Like Me
Complaint of El Río Grande
Leaving in the Rain: Limerick, Ireland
Island Body
Matters of the Sea
Mother Country
My Father in English
El Americano in the Mirror
Using Country in a Sentence
American Wandersong
Imaginary Exile
Let’s Remake America Great
Until We Could
between [another door]
One Pulse—One Poem
Seventeen Funerals
America the Beautiful, Again
What I Know of Country
And So We All Fall Down
Declaration of Inter-Dependence
Cloud Anthem

Here I Am: New Poems Part 2

Uncertain-Sea Principle
Seashore: An Ovillejo
Hineni
Weather of My Weathering
Life Without Rain
Thank You: For Not Letting Me Die
Bluejay Dialogue: An Ovillejo
The Cutting
Writing Home
For the Homeland of My Body
Become Me
Reverse Bucket List
Time Capsule
Living Will
Self to Self
Anti-Poem
A Good Day to Die
Moonrise
Say This Isn’t the End

Notes
Credits
Acknowledgments
Richard Blanco is the recent recipient of the National Humanities Medal. He has received awards for several of his books, including the poetry collections How To Love a County and Looking for The Gulf Motel, and memoirs For All of Us, One Today and The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood. He was selected by Barack Obama as the 5th presidential inaugural poet in US history. He was named as the American Academy of Poets first-ever education ambassador. Connect with him online: richard-blanco.com, Twitter (rblancopoet), Facebook (RichardBlancoPoetry), and Instagram (poetrichardblanco).
Richard Blanco View titles by Richard Blanco

About

A rich, accomplished, intensely intimate collection with 2 full sections of new poems bookending Blanco’s selections from his 5 previous volumes

“An engineer, poet, Cuban American . . . his poetry bridges cultures and languages—a mosaic of our past, our present, and our future—reflecting a nation that is hectic, colorful, and still becoming.”—President Joe Biden, conferring the National Humanities Medal on Richard Blanco, 2023

“What a gift, this new gathering of poems from the singular Richard Blanco. A cause for rejoicing!”—Krista Tippett, author of Being Wise and host of On Being

“Blanco’s poems are journeys to a homeland within the heart, a welcome homecoming earned from a lifetime’s wise voyaging.”—Sandra Cisneros

“A triumphant anthem to a rich life in all its ages and awakenings.”—Naomi Shihab Nye

In this collection of over 100 poems, Richard Blanco has carefully selected poems from his previous books that represent his evolution as a writer grappling with his identity, working to find and define “home,” and bookended them with new poems that address those issues from a fresh, more mature perspective, allowing him to approach surrendering the pain and urgency of his past explorations. Pausing at this pivotal moment in mid-career, Blanco reexamines his life-long quest to find his proverbial home and all that it encompasses: love, family, identity and ultimately art itself. In the closing section of the volume, he has come to understand and internalize the idea that “home” is not one place, not one thing, and lives both inside him and inside his art.

The poems range in form, voice, and setting, showcasing his command of craft, but in essence they are one continuous reflection on the existential question at the core of all of Blanco’s poetry: how can we find our place in the world. All are characterized by his keen eye, deep sensibility, and polished craft, without pretense. This volume is a gift to Blanco’s many readers but even more to those who have yet to discover that they can understand, and fall in love with poetry, that a poet can speak to them about his own and their own lives so profoundly, and that this poet, as Barack Obama discovered, can speak for all of us.

Richard Blanco has been justly celebrated for his poetic gifts and his command of the many forms poetry can take, from the finely structured to the prose poem formats. His previous volumes have been praised by Patricia Smith, Eileen Myles, Sandra Cisneros, Elizabeth Alexander, and many others. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and dozens of other publications.

Table of Contents

Radiant Beings: New Poems Part 1

The Splintering
—playing god—
Why I Needed To
Until This: An Ekphrastic Ars Poetica
Questioning Villa Vizcaya Museum and Gardens
Radiant Beings: Photos by Joyce Tenneson
—anatomy of light—
To the Artist of the Invisible
Big Wood River
What You Didn’t Let Us Lose
Music in Our Hands
Visiting Elizabeth: A Glosa
What Governs Us
Maine Yet Miami
Upon a Time: Surfside, Miami

From City of a Hundred Fires

América
La Revolución at Antonio’s Mercado
Mango, Number 61
Shaving
Mother Picking Produce
The Silver Sands
324 Mendoza Avenue, #6
Havanasis
Varadero en Alba
El Jagua Resort
Found Letters from 1965: El Año de la Agricultura
El Cucubano
Décima Guajira
Palmita Mía
Palmita Mía

From Directions to the Beach of the Dead

Time as Art in the Eternal City
A Poet in Venice
We’re Not Going to Malta . . .
Somewhere to Paris
Torsos at the Louvre
After Barcelona, in Barcelona
Directions to the Beach of the Dead
Winter of the Volcanoes: Guatemala
Bargaining with a Goddess
Return from El Cerrado
Silent Family Clips
Papá’s Bridge
What’s Love Got to Do?
Visiting Metaphors at South Point
Translation for Mamá
The Perfect City Code
When I Was a Little Cuban Boy
Looking for Blackbirds, Hartford
How Can You Love New York?
No More Than This, Provincetown
Crossing Boston Harbor
Mexican Almuerzo in New England
where it begins—where it ends

From Looking for the Gulf Motel

Looking for The Gulf Motel
Betting on America
Taking My Cousin’s Photo at the Statue of Liberty
The Island Within
Practice Problem
El Florida Room
Afternoons as Endora
Queer Theory: According to My Grandmother
Maybe
Thicker Than Country
Killing Mark
Cooking with Mamá in Maine
My Father in My Hands
Since Unfinished

From How to Love a Country

Como Tú / Like You / Like Me
Complaint of El Río Grande
Leaving in the Rain: Limerick, Ireland
Island Body
Matters of the Sea
Mother Country
My Father in English
El Americano in the Mirror
Using Country in a Sentence
American Wandersong
Imaginary Exile
Let’s Remake America Great
Until We Could
between [another door]
One Pulse—One Poem
Seventeen Funerals
America the Beautiful, Again
What I Know of Country
And So We All Fall Down
Declaration of Inter-Dependence
Cloud Anthem

Here I Am: New Poems Part 2

Uncertain-Sea Principle
Seashore: An Ovillejo
Hineni
Weather of My Weathering
Life Without Rain
Thank You: For Not Letting Me Die
Bluejay Dialogue: An Ovillejo
The Cutting
Writing Home
For the Homeland of My Body
Become Me
Reverse Bucket List
Time Capsule
Living Will
Self to Self
Anti-Poem
A Good Day to Die
Moonrise
Say This Isn’t the End

Notes
Credits
Acknowledgments

Author

Richard Blanco is the recent recipient of the National Humanities Medal. He has received awards for several of his books, including the poetry collections How To Love a County and Looking for The Gulf Motel, and memoirs For All of Us, One Today and The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood. He was selected by Barack Obama as the 5th presidential inaugural poet in US history. He was named as the American Academy of Poets first-ever education ambassador. Connect with him online: richard-blanco.com, Twitter (rblancopoet), Facebook (RichardBlancoPoetry), and Instagram (poetrichardblanco).
Richard Blanco View titles by Richard Blanco

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