. . . a new constellation . . .

 

More interviews are scheduled for early the next morning. We call it a night, and my village reconvenes in my hotel room. We slip off our shoes, brew some tea, and begin a round-robin reading of the thousands of e-mails and Facebook messages we received throughout the day and which are still coming in. Messages from senior citizens and schoolchildren, from foreign nationals and New Englanders who were alive to see Frost read his poem, from gay and straight soldiers and parents, from prominent Latinos and those as salt-of-the-earth as my mother and father, from members of Congress and immigrant families from all over the globe. The messages are like poems. They speak of their tears and hand holding as they listened to the poem, their sense of belonging and healing, their pride and hope, their lives and Americanness. As a poet, I’ve been schooled to never conjure up clichéd imagery, but there is no other way to say this: we stumble over words blurred by our tears, at times our voices surrender to silence as the only fitting homage to the pure, uncensored honesty we feel unworthy to read aloud.

Throughout the next day, before leaving Washington, I continue living and breathing these messages. They reconfirm my belief in poetry as a mirror, able to affect and enhance lives, but they also call to mind my long-held concerns about the state of poetry in America. Why isn’t poetry a part of our cultural lives and conversations; part of our popular folklore as with film, music, and novels? I suddenly remember my first trip to Cuba, when I tell my cousins and uncles that I’m a poet, and they take out their guitars, a bottle of moonshine rum, and ask me to “sing with them.” I don’t understand what they mean. They begin strumming and singing to the moon in Spanish through impromptu décimas, a syllabic and rhymed poetic form. Most of my relatives have a high school education at best, and yet they know poetry; they know their national poets and can quote verses from Nicolás Guillén, José Lezama Lima, and José Martí, who to this day is considered a Cuban national hero referred to as the “Apostle.” Poetry is entrenched in their history, rooted in their folklore, established in their national identity and their very lives.

Reflecting back on my own life, I realize that all throughout grade school, high school, and college I was never introduced to a single poem by a living poet. Unacceptable. Not until I began taking creative writing courses on my own after college did I encounter the incredible spectrum of contemporary poets writing about the very communities and issues of my day. Poetry then became alive and relevant to my life. Why hadn’t that happened sooner? I think of all the middle school children I’ve worked with over the years, how their eyes light up when we read and discuss poetry that mirrors their own families, neighborhoods, lives, and experiences.

The messages from my country speak clearly to me of the great potential and hope for poetry in America. In a visionary moment, I know the greater good that must come from my honor as inaugural poet. I make a conscious commitment to keep connecting America with poetry and reshape how we think about it, to try to dispel the myths and misconceptions about the art by introducing us to more contemporary work that speaks to our lives in real time. And, moreover, to explore how I can empower educators to teach contemporary poetry and foster a new generation of poetry readers. I think again about Sandy Hook, those children who died, but also those children and parents who survived them. I know there is poetry that can help them process their grief, make sense of the senseless, find a way to heal, and believe the sun is a sunflower again.