. . . the empty desks of twenty children . . .

 

Sorting out my cultural contradictions and yearnings and what it meant, by contrast, to be—or not to be—an American became an obsession, the central themes of my poems since graduate school and to this day. I would say I had been writing about America long before I got the assignment from the Presidential Inaugural Committee. As such, at first I felt somewhat comfortable and cautiously confident about writing the inaugural poem. After all, it was the same assignment as the one from years before: Write a poem about America. Or so I thought.

Ready to work the very first day after I got the call, I relocated my laptop and printer from my office to the kitchen table downstairs, as I usually do whenever I tackle a big writing project. Changing my environment helps stimulate creativity, even if it means simply changing the view in the window from the pond at the front of our house to the saw-tooth profile of the White Mountains that grace the windows of my kitchen and living room. My dog, Joey, followed me downstairs, sleeping all day by the fireplace, as did my two cats, Buddha and Sammy, joining me at the table, their tails tick-tocking the minutes, then hours away as I stared at a blank screen.

I spent the next two days in a creative incubation period, reading and thinking about the assignment, its possibilities and potential pitfalls as I waited for the muse to strike. Naturally, I first turned to the inaugural poems by Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, Miller Williams, and Elizabeth Alexander, studying their respective approaches and how each fulfilled the assignment. Suddenly, in the company of such great poets, I felt part of a continuum, wanting to honor them with humility and grace by offering my voice, adding to the story they had told in their poems—the story of our country. I was entranced by Angelou’s use of symbols—the rock, the tree, the river—as a form of shorthand that spoke through the power of nature, and impressed by Alexander’s images and catalog of people going about their morning. I mused over the America represented in Frost’s poem in contrast to the present-day America I had to speak to. All these elements would eventually influence the writing of “One Today.”

For further inspiration, I turned to poets I had long admired for the emotional accessibility of their voices that spoke plain and true. Among these, some old favorites: Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Hass, Philip Levine, Pablo Neruda, Sandra Cisneros, Adam Zagajewski, Martín Espada, Billy Collins, and Campbell McGrath, my mentor and former professor. All these voices have been essential to the cultivation of my own voice throughout the years. I also paged through poems of some newer favorites who have touched my soul: Rachel McKibbens, Ada Limón, and Marlena Mörling. And I riffled through the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry but was surprised to find so few poems (outside of Whitman’s and Ginsberg’s) that had taken on the subject of America with the breadth and scope I thought necessary for the occasion. Then again, I wasn’t surprised: the occasional poem has never been front and center in American poetry. I came to accept the inaugural poem as its own genre, practically. But still, no breakthrough in the writing.

During the incubation period I also considered my many hats as the first gay, first immigrant, and first Latino inaugural poet, initially feeling a self-imposed pressure or temptation to write poems that would have some political charge. But I soon decided that my selection was enough of a statement. It would be redundant or much too obvious to write a poem that spoke directly to what I already represented as a person. And besides, my work has never been characterized as political. It would have been out of character—disingenuous—for me. Leave the politics to the politicians—that’s their genre, not mine, I thought. I came to understand my role—the historical role of the inaugural poet—as visionary and the poem as a vision of what could be (celebratory, uplifting, hopeful), reaching for our highest aspirations as a country and a people. Yet I also knew I had to fold in some kind of tension and hard truth—not come across as a greeting-card poet. But, still, inspiration would not strike.

By the third day, anxiety really began to set in as I faced the reality of my assignment: three poems in three weeks, one of which would arguably be the most important poem of my writing life—and then having to read it to millions on the world stage! I started meditating daily, trying to let go of my apprehensions and surrender to the muse. I called upon my spiritual ancestors for help and guidance. And I worked through a lot of false starts and drafts of poems I chose to abandon. During mental breaks and at lunchtime, or at moments when I was at my wit’s end and had to disconnect, I’d watch recorded episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Bewitched, and, my favorite, The Brady Bunch—as I always have, still addicted to that yesteryear version of America. Then the news of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary broke—another one of those moments I instantly knew would live inside me—inside us—forever.

Marcia Brady’s maudlin tears over her broken nose against the tears on the speechless faces of parents who’d lost their children; Mary Tyler Moore’s constant good cheer against President Obama’s grief-stricken countenance during the memorial service; Samantha Stevens’s perfect house in Connecticut and her magical powers against the powerless reality of Sandy Hook—all these sharp contrasts triggered a turning point in my connection with America and a creative breakthrough. Just days before I had spent an entire day with students at a middle school in Connecticut, reading and talking about poetry, lighting up the faces of children like the faces of the children at Sandy Hook. It affected me more than any other American tragedy in my lifetime. And I realized that, in addition to my parents’ story, there was another story I had been born into—the story of America—one I had not yet fully explored or embraced in my writing or my life. Not the imaginary America on TV but the real, real American family I felt I belonged to through the Sandy Hook tragedy, those parents and children that our entire country wanted to hold and comfort. I knew then, without question, that I would do my best to honor and remember them forever in my inaugural poem.

The tragedy opened a new emotional and creative pathway for me. Writing the inaugural poem wasn’t the same assignment anymore. I suddenly understood that as a Cuban-American, I hadn’t explored my American side of the hyphen as much as my Cuban side. There had always been some small part of me that didn’t really feel American. The true American boy seemed like someone else, not me exactly. Perhaps I had subscribed to the mindset of my exile community, which saw their lives here only as temporary; America was home, but not a permanent one. Just as my parents wanted to return to their island paradise, perhaps all along I had wanted to return to the paradise of that America I had idealized since grade school, though both were just as imaginary, just as unreachable. I began asking questions of myself and our country that I had never before dared to ask or explore. The three inaugural poems I would eventually write, including “One Today,” were, in one way or another, inspired responses to those questions I asked myself.