About the 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).

Reviews

“Tender and introspective. . . . An exceptional mid-career snapshot of a trailblazing poet’s remarkable journey.”
—Booklist

“Accessible and sincere, Blanco’s poems may sometimes play tag with unmasked sentiment, but they are equally capable of sharp commentary and a keen engagement with contemporary American life.”
—Library Journal

“Some of his narrations are strong and precise, while others are rhythmic, especially his closing poems, which employ repetition and sounds that are almost song-like. Blanco’s poems are full of life and warmth.”
—AudioFile Magazine

“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

“Richard Blanco’s Homeland of My Body is a triumphant anthem to a rich life in all its ages and awakenings. ‘What should I do? / Every thing.’ These stunning new poems, astonishing in their generosity, cradle so many long-loved ones, that a full, new world is created—not broken into parts at all, but wholly realized, and utterly moving.”
—Naomi Shihab Nye

“A masterful poet who is clear-eyed and full of heart, Blanco explores the country’s haunted past while offering a bright hope for the future.”
—Ada Limón

“What I love about Blanco’s work is the lustiness of the poems; they have bodies, there’s such sensuality to the language, such flexibility to the line; and they display such delight in form, an unapologetic love for the world. He has become a poet who sings for all of us with the inclusivity and passion of a Whitman and the particularity and absorption in the quotidian of a William Carlos Williams, the street smarts of a Langston Hughes, the oratorical grandness of an MLK.”
—Julia Alvarez

“There is a uniting oneness to these passionate and remarkable poems, each finely wrought line a bridge from one heart to another, a love song of this burdened earth and all its flawed inhabitants. Richard Blanco is this century’s Walt Whitman.”
—Andre Dubus III

“Richard Blanco writes about the elusive poundingness of love.”
—Eileen Myles

“In these times of hate, we need poets who speak of love.”
—Martín Espada