Once when we were in London the Times advertised a poetry reading by Seamus Heaney (pronounced Hee-ny) at a large theater near Leicester Square. This was before 1995, when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, but he was already well known, so after dinner we walked down Gower Street to hear him.
We were too late. In America, we’re used to strolling into poetry readings at the last minute and finding room near the front, but the theater was already packed. An excited babble of Irish and English voices washed over us as we stood in the lobby wondering if we could squeeze in. In the end, for the spillover crowd, they put his reading on the large television in the lobby, which had the advantage of also being where the bar was located. It was a wonderful reading.
Poetry’s more popular all over Europe than it is in the States, but the Irish in particular love their poets. We’ve heard Irish cabbies, policemen, and bricklayers spontaneously recite poems by W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, and Cecil Day-Lewis (father of the actor Daniel Day-Lewis), often with a pint of Guinness in hand. My favorite uncle — my mother’s high-spirited brother, Thomas McDonald — liked to jump on a table at parties to recite some sentimental (and occasionally scurrilous) verses.
Recently, Ireland voted on its “most-loved poem” of the last century. A committee of writers and teachers nominated ten poems out of 450 chosen by public ballot, and the public then voted again, for the winner. (A bit like our system in picking St. Pete’s new pier, but different in that it actually worked.) The winner, a sonnet about his mother by Heaney — quoted above — was announced by the president of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, to joyful applause.
Speaking of joyful applause, I’m happy to report that America’s making strides in this direction. To celebrate National Poetry Month (April, because it includes Shakespeare’s birthday), St. Petersburg College invited Richard Blanco to read here. Ever since Blanco read his poem “One Today” to the millions who watched President Obama’s 2013 inaugural, he’s been touring the country, bringing poetry to enthusiastic crowds. He read at St. Pete’s Palladium to a large audience that paid $10 to get in — a rarity for American poetry readings — and gave him a standing ovation at the end.
Like Heaney’s poem to his mother, Blanco’s poems circle around family and fate, loaded with details that connect to larger vistas: “My mother’s face should still be resting against/his bare chest like the moon resting on the sea.” Of our inaugural poets, Blanco is the first immigrant, first Hispanic, first openly gay, and youngest. As he told the audience, he was conceived in Cuba, born in Spain, brought to New York before he was a year old, and then on to Miami’s Cuban neighborhood when he was 4. Now, that’s a crackerjack springboard for a young poet.
Poets are always asking “Who am I?” and for Richard Blanco that’s obviously an interesting and complicated question. Although he’s lived his whole life in America, his poetry has the classic bittersweet taste of poets in exile, from Ovid to Derek Walcott. In addition, like two American poets he admires, Dr. William Carlos Williams and insurance executive Wallace Stevens, he’s always held a “real” job, most recently as a civil engineer in Maine. Throw in a sense of humor with the charisma of a star actor, and we have someone who, before he’s done, may help create an enthusiastic audience for American poetry.
This article appears in Apr 23-29, 2015.