One Today

For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey by Richard Blanco (2013)

Blanco writes of the inspiration he had as well as the challenges he faced as he set about his task of writing the poem he would read at the presidential inauguration. He also tells the story of how he, as a Latino immigrant, developed his understanding of the nation he now belongs to. He offers his thoughts about the role poetry can play in American life and reflects on the greatness of the US and what makes it so. The book contains “One Today” and two other poems by Blanco that he wrote for the inauguration (“Mother Country” and “What We Know of Country”) before choosing “One Today.” All three poems are also translated into Spanish.

“Richard Blanco’s Inaugural Poem for Obama Is a Grand Flop” by Carol Rumens (2013)

In this article for The Guardian newspaper’s book blog, Rumens comments on the difficulty in the modern age of writing a celebratory poem for a national occasion that not only hits all the right notes of inspiration and uplift but is also honest and wise. Blanco’s poem “is a valiant but not always convincing attempt,” according to Rumens. It has its strengths, including “a novelistic eye for detail and broad, sweeping description,” and some lines are “simple in language and thought, and still effective as poetry.” However, Rumens argues that the motif of unity “isn’t strong enough to bear so much repetition.” The problem is that “it’s not only America but the world which has one sky, one sun, one moon. The unity that pulls diversity together and gives everyone hope is an ideal rather than the reality being urged on us.” 

“A Conversation With Richard Blanco: ‘One Today,’ One Year Later” by Gregg Barrios (2014)

In this interview for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Blanco talks about how he first started writing poetry as a child, his first poetry collections, the poets who influenced his work, and his sexual orientation as gay. He also discusses why he wrote three poems for the inauguration and why he selected “One Today” over the other two. He says of the first line of the poem, “[T]he actual sun in the poem is connected to rural Maine and the small town Bethel where I live as I watch the sun rise over the pines. It was this moment of illumination—the transcendent power of nature. The poem took off from that one line.”