Election year -- Dreaming a wall -- Complaint of El Rio Grande -- Como tu/Like you/Like me -- Staring at Aspens: a history lesson -- Letter from Yi Cheung -- Leaving in the rain: Limerick, Ireland -- Island body -- What we didn't know about Cuba -- Matters of the sea -- Mother country -- My father in English, indeed -- El americano in the mirror -- Using country in a sentence -- American wandersong -- Imaginary exile -- November eyes -- Let's remake America great -- Easy lynching on Herndon Avenue -- Poetry assignment #4: what do you miss most? -- St. Louis: prayer before dawn -- Until we could -- Between [another door] -- Pulse-one poem -- Funerals -- Remembering Boston strong -- America the beautiful again -- What I know of country -- St. Louis: prayer at dawn -- Now without me -- And so we all fall down -- Cloud anthem.
Summary:
"The diverse poems in this collection form a mosaic of seemingly varied topics: the Pulse Nightclub massacre; an unexpected encounter on a visit to Cuba; the forced exile of 8,500 Navajos in 1868; the arrival of a young Chinese woman at Angel Island in 1938; the incarceration of a gifted writer; and the poet's abiding love for his partner, who he is finally allowed to wed. But despite each poem's unique subject matter or occasion, all are fundamentally asking one overwhelming question: how to love this country? Seeking answers, Blanco digs deep into the very marrow of our nation--our cities and towns--with poems that interrogate our past and present, grieve our injustices and note our flaws, yet remember to celebrate our ideals and cling to our hopes. Blanco unravels the very fabric of the American narrative, pursuing a resolution to the inherent contradiction of our nation's psyche and mandate: e pluribus unum (out of many, one), charged with the Utopian idea that no single narrative is more important than another, and that America could and ought someday to be a county where all narratives converge into one. A country in which we can all truly thrive and truly love"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.