Richard Blanco Reads Elizabeth Bishop

Summary

The New Yorker: Poetry — Richard Blanco Reads Elizabeth Bishop

Date: July 29, 2026
Host: Kevin Young, Poetry Editor, The New Yorker
Guest: Richard Blanco, Poet and Memoirist

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Overview

This episode of The New Yorker: Poetry spotlights the work of Elizabeth Bishop through a reading and discussion of her poem “Questions of Travel,” as well as a reading of Richard Blanco’s own poem, “My Father in English.” Kevin Young and Richard Blanco explore themes of travel, home, displacement, language, and identity, with Blanco offering personal and deeply reflective insights on Bishop’s influence and on his own creative process. Throughout, the episode balances close poetic analysis with intimate memoir, illustrating the ways poetry can bridge distances—geographical, cultural, and linguistic.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Richard Blanco’s Connection to Elizabeth Bishop

[04:39] – [05:19]

• Bishop has been an influence on Blanco since graduate school, shaping his own preoccupation with “home, place, and belonging.”
• Bishop’s poetry, especially “Questions of Travel,” resonates with Blanco’s lifelong artistic obsessions: “When I read this poem, I was like, wow, yes… her entire body of work… is searching for home in a different way than I am.” (Richard Blanco, 04:39-04:51)
• Context: The poem was inspired during Bishop’s 15-year stay in Brazil, a period marked by her immersion in a foreign landscape and culture.

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2. Reading: “Questions of Travel” by Elizabeth Bishop

[05:38] – [09:46]

• Richard Blanco gives a deliberate, thoughtful reading, highlighting the poem’s layered imagery and patience.
• The poem meditates on the act of travel, asking: “Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? Where should we be today?" and contemplates the nature of seeing, dreaming, and regret.

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3. Analyzing Bishop’s Technique and Themes

[10:34] – [15:49]

• Slowness & Density:
  • Bishop’s poetry "feels like, oh, yeah, okay, whatever" at first glance, but reveals hidden density and meaning when read slowly. She “takes her time to painstakingly…render these images and then to connect them and layer them.” (Richard Blanco, 10:45–11:13)
  • Travel is shown to provoke questions about home and identity.
    • “Travel…always brings up those questions at home because we always go and there’s always sort of a hidden agenda that we’re…trying to find paradise.” (Richard Blanco, 11:33–11:39)
• Unanswerable Questions & Imagination:
  • Bishop’s lines such as, “should we have stayed at home and thought of here?” and “oh, must we dream our dreams and have them too?” are touchstones for Blanco—questions that underlie much of his life and poetry.
  • Quote: “Maybe home is in your own backyard. And it’s just human nature to serve the proverbial greener GR on the other side.” (Richard Blanco, 13:48–13:51)
• Language’s Simplicity and Complexity:
  • Bishop’s accessible language belies complex ideas: “You can tell as long as the telling is really interesting…accessible language, but yet…complex thoughts.” (Richard Blanco, 14:04–14:12)

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4. Bishop’s Observational Style and Writing about Place

[14:28] – [19:05]

• Bishop is described as a painterly observer, someone “concerned with the image of the thing.”
• Kevin Young notes Bishop “writes through seeing,” contemplating not just place but the act of writing and observation itself.
• The poem compares natural and unnatural acts (“rain so much like politicians’ speeches…then a sudden golden silence in which the traveler takes a notebook, writes”).

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5. Interpretation: Absence of the ‘I’ and the Notion of Displacement

[22:15] – [24:00]

• The absence of the “I” in “Questions of Travel” may represent the estrangement of the self during travel; “you’re displaced in a great way. And I think even when…’the traveler takes a notebook,’ you know it’s her…” (Richard Blanco, 23:04–23:29)
• Travel destabilizes identity and allows a person to be someone else, “to be displaced in a great way.”
• Blanco shares personal stories of literally retracing Bishop's steps—“I’ve been stalking Elizabeth Bishop for all of her houses…”—and reflects on the uncanny connection he feels with her poetry despite their different backgrounds.

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6. Universality and Power of Unexpected Connections

[24:55] – [26:10]

• Blanco movingly notes it's powerful to see oneself in a writer who is so different:
  • “It’s really, really powerful when you start to see yourself in some other person or a writer…what does that have to do with a little gay kid, Cuban kid from Miami? And yet…I have this bond.” (Richard Blanco, 24:58–25:09)
• Art can forge surprising and intense connections across distance, background, and even language.

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7. Intertwining of Place, Identity, and Negation in “Questions of Travel”

[27:47] – [29:44]

• The poem is as much about what didn’t happen (“never to have done this, never to have done that”) as what did; it’s full of negations.
• Kevin Young observes that Bishop highlights constraints on freedom—“the choice is never wide and never free”—subverting the romantic idea of travel’s openness.
• Both poets comment on how contradictions and complexes—simultaneously true and false, possible and impossible—define the search for home and meaning.

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8. Transition to Richard Blanco’s Poetry: “My Father in English”

[33:15] – [34:26]

• Blanco shares that the poem emerged organically at the end of a book manuscript, written quickly and almost as an afterthought for “balance.”
• Background: Poem written for his 2019 collection How to Love a Country; it explores his father’s relationship to English and the immigrant experience.

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9. Reading: “My Father in English” by Richard Blanco

[34:35] – [37:13]

• Poem portrays Blanco's father’s journey from Cuba, grappling with language and transformation as an exile in America.
• Evokes the tactile and emotional realities of language acquisition, repeated attempts at “indeed,” and the tender gratitude Blanco feels as he “conjugate[s] myself here in the present of this country.”

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10. Process, Language, and Untranslatable Experience

[38:11] – [44:55]

• The poem’s structure echoes the rhythms of English and Spanish; the central role of “indeed,” his father’s favorite but imperfectly grasped word, is discussed both critically and lovingly.
• Blanco reflects on his own bilingual upbringing, the privilege of linguistic mobility, and the way translation is both possible and always incomplete.
• Quote: “I cuss, I make love in Spanish and I think in English. But there are certain words…that I can’t translate…” (Richard Blanco, 43:03–43:51)

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11. The Poetic Act as Translation, Memorial, and Connection

[46:06] – [47:53]

• Every poem about family or childhood is inherently a translation: “I am translating him, and he was never quite translated because I can never capture him either completely.” (Richard Blanco, 47:34-47:53)
• Poetry is an act of preservation, an attempt to render loved ones into language and keep their stories alive.

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12. Public Versus Private Poetry & The Poet’s Persona

[48:39] – [52:03]

• Blanco discusses the transformation from writing personal poems to writing for an audience, especially as inaugural poet.
• Occasional poems (for public events) still arise from deeply personal sources and must find common ground with readers/listeners: “Every poem to me now became an occasion…where’s that common ground.” (Richard Blanco, 49:43–49:44)
• Language acts as both shield and connector: poetry is public but stems from personal truth; the persona on the page is both the “truer me” and a form of protection.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

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On Elizabeth Bishop & “Questions of Travel”

• “Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? Maybe that’s the question of my life.”
  — Richard Blanco, reflecting on Bishop’s existential questions (13:06)
• “Every poem is in some ways a conversation between the poet and themselves, and then that someone gets to overhear.”
  — Richard Blanco, on poetry’s dialogic nature (19:05)
• “She doesn’t say, could Pascal have been wrong; he could not have been entirely right. She’s always caging these kind of questions.”
  — Kevin Young, on Bishop’s subtlety (17:41)
• “There’s an incredible fragility in the middle of all this. Like, I’m almost rendering this place because I need to understand who I am in the world.”
  — Richard Blanco, discussing Bishop’s search for self in travel (17:06)

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On “My Father in English”

• “Indeed did indeed become his favorite word, which, like the rest of his new life, he never quite grasped…Yet the word I most learned to love and know him through.”
  — Richard Blanco, from the poem (36:44)
• “I cuss, I make love in Spanish and I think in English. But there are certain words…that I can’t translate…”
  — Richard Blanco (43:51)
• “Every poem of mine is an attempt to translate their lives.”
  — Richard Blanco, on the role of poetry (47:53)
• “…He was never quite translated because I can never capture him either completely.”
  — Richard Blanco (47:52)

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On Poetry’s Public and Private Dimensions

• “This is written so that others can understand themselves, their family, their experiences, their memories. And I think that happens…by adhering to the art…that is a wonderful…not a shield, but…it’s the better me, right? The truer me.”
  — Richard Blanco (50:38–51:09)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [04:39] — Richard Blanco describes his personal connection to Bishop
• [05:38] — Reading: “Questions of Travel”
• [09:46] — Discussion of Bishop’s imagery & method
• [13:06] — Notable Bishop quote; impact on Blanco’s life
• [19:05] — “Every poem is…a conversation overheard.”
• [24:21] — Blanco recounts visiting Bishop’s home; personal identification
• [34:35] — Reading: “My Father in English”
• [43:03] — On bilingualism and untranslatable words
• [47:34] — On poetry as translation & memorial
• [48:39] — Discussion of poetry’s public dimension

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Episode Flow and Style

• The conversation is reflective and intimate, marked by a gentle humor and openness between Blanco and Young.
• Analysis of Bishop is reverent yet accessible, combining close reading with literary history and personal anecdote.
• The tone is honest: Blanco shares vulnerability about his family, linguistic background, and creative insecurities.
• The dialogue weaves between specific poetic devices (repetition, syntax, imagery) and sweeping questions of cultural belonging and the limits of language.

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Key Takeaways

• Both poetry and travel are ways of searching for home and self, yet both are fraught with contradiction, limitations, and the enduring ache of the untranslatable.
• Elizabeth Bishop’s poems challenge ideas of place, belonging, and observation, remaining hauntingly open-ended.
• Richard Blanco’s “My Father in English” offers a portrait of love, sacrifice, and linguistic transformation, embodying the poetry of exile and inheritance.
• Poetry, whether public or private, is ultimately about connection: translating the personal into something shared, if imperfectly, with others.

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For further reading:

• Questions of Travel and My Father in English are available on newyorker.com.
• Elizabeth Bishop's Complete Poems (new edition, July 2026) and Richard Blanco’s recent collection Homeland of My Body are both recommended by the episode.

Transcript

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[Kevin Young]

Hi, you're listening to the New Yorker Poetry Podcast. I'm Kevin Young, poetry editor of the New Yorker magazine. On this program, we invite a poet to select a poem from the New Yorker archive to read and discuss. Then they read one of their own poems that's been published in the magazine today. My guest is the poet and memoirist Richard Blanco. He's the recipient of a National Humanities Medal and of many other honors, including a Lambda Literary Award, the Patterson Poetry Prize, and the Tom Gunn Award for Gay poetry. He was selected by Barack Obama as the fifth presidential inaugural poet in U.S. history and was named as the American Academy of Poets first ever education ambassador. Richard, welcome. Thanks for joining us.

[Richard Blanco]

Wonderful to be here with you, Kevin.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah, it's great to have you. So the first poem you've chosen to read is Questions of Travel by Elizabeth Bishop. What was it about this particular poem that caught your attention when you were looking through the archives?

[Richard Blanco]

Well, Elizabeth Bishop has always been a great influence since the days of graduate school, and in part, as eventually became apparent to me, that my life's obsession in my work, or the question that I've always, will always have in my mind is this question of home, place, and belonging. And when I read this poem. I was like, wow, yes. And then of course her, her entire body of work, which, which in some ways is searching for home in a different way than I am. But yeah, this is definitely a poem that's ringing a lot of bells for me, especially back in the day when I was just my voice was dawning and my concerns and my my interests and my work and what I was doing. So I think that our listeners should

[Richard Blanco Reading]

just know that this takes place during

[Richard Blanco]

her time or was inspired during her time in Brazil where she lived for about 15 something years. So some of the landscapes and people scapes that show up in the poem sounds perfect.

[Kevin Young]

Here's Richard Blanco reading Questions of Travel by Elizabeth Bishop.

[Richard Blanco Reading]

Questions of Travel There are too many waterfalls here. The crowded streams hurry too rapidly down to the sea, and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops makes them spill over the sides in soft slow motion, turning to waterfalls under our very eyes. For if those streaks, those mile long shiny tear stains, aren't waterfalls yet, in a quick age or so as ages go, here they probably will be. But if the streams and clouds keep traveling, traveling, the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships, slime hung and barnacled. Think of the long trip home. Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? Where should we be today? Is it right to be watching strangers in a play in the strangest of theaters? What childishness is it that while there is a breath of life in our bodies, we are determined to rush to see the sun the other way around, the tiniest green hummingbird in the world, to stare at some inexplicable old stonework, inexplicable and impenetrable at any view, instantly seen and always, always delightful. Oh, must we dream our dreams and have them too? And have we room for one more folded sunset, still quite warm. But surely it would have been a pity not to have seen the trees along this road, really exaggerated in their beauty, not to have seen them gesturing like noble pantomimists robed in pink, not to have had to stop for gas and heard the sad two noted wooden tune of disparate wooden clogs carelessly clacking over a grease stained filling station floor. In another country the clogs would all be tested. Each pair there would have identical pitch. A pity not to have heard the other less primitive music of the fat brown bird who sings above the broken gasoline pump in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque. Three towers, five silver crosses. Yes, a pity not to have pondered blurredly and inconclusively on what connection can exist for centuries between the crudest wooden footwear and careful and finicky, the whittled fantasies of wooden cages. Never to have studied history in the weak calligraphy of songbirds cages, and never to have listened to rain so much like politicians, speeches. Two hours of unrelenting oratory and then a sudden golden silence in which the traveler takes a notebook, writes. Is it lack of imagination that makes us come to imagine to places not just stay at home? Or could Pascal have been not entirely right about just sitting quietly in one's room? Continent, city, country, society. The choice is never wide and never free. And here or there, no. Should we have stayed at home, wherever that may be?

[Kevin Young]

That was Questions of Travel by Elizabeth Bishop, which was originally published in the January 21, 1956 issue of the New Yorker. Wow. You know, hearing you read it, I loved the pacing you had with it, because it can kind of blur by, as she says, blurredly in that part, but. But it has all these kind of ponderous, extended moments. It's almost like a long, slow pulling back or something of the camera, or maybe it's a zooming in. And I'm curious about the sort of ways that it doesn't just happen in landscape, but also in language. She's talking, in many ways about strangeness, but then also has these questions that are kind of unanswerable. How do you take either the title or the questions themselves in the poem?

[Richard Blanco Reading]

Sure, sure.

[Richard Blanco]

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I should say that when I first started reading Bishop, I would probably read it rather quickly. Right. And it feels like, oh, yeah, okay, whatever.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah.

[Richard Blanco]

You know, you don't realize the density of the imagery and the meaning behind his page. And so I've learned to read her very slowly in that sense because she really takes her time to painstakingly takes time to sort of render these images and then to then connect them and layer them. Like you can almost start seeing the very connections between thoughts of how one thing leaps to another. And so I've always admired that because I think, in a way, she's constructing place in her own mind.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah.

[Richard Blanco]

While she's, you know, looking at it. Right. Or experiencing it.

[Kevin Young]

Right.

[Richard Blanco]

And I think that in a way, again, in some ways, every poem I write, it was a reconstruction of some kind of memory about place or place I belong to or somehow have traveled through and want to understand this. These. This eternal question of what is place, what is.

[Kevin Young]

Right. Right.

[Richard Blanco]

And I think travel does it. You know, I always say travel is really brings up those questions at home.

[Kevin Young]

Right.

[Richard Blanco]

Because we always go and there's always sort of a hidden agenda that we're. We're trying to find paradise. Right. And you start looking at the real estate agents.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah, exactly. Instantly want to live there. Yeah, yeah. Oh, honey, look how.

[Richard Blanco]

Look how cheap the houses are here. Right. And then, of course, like I like to say, every place is great for about three days. And if you don't know the language, three months. But otherwise, people are just going about their life. And I think what she captures some of the more mundane, what would appear to be mundane or everyday rather, that make us understand a place more than the tourist spots and the tourist traps.

[Kevin Young]

Well, as she says, think of the long trip home. Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? I mean, I love that clever idea, like the difference between imagining a place. Because she's not even just talking about when you go to a place and you imagine living there, she's saying, what if you don't even go there and you kind of picture it, you have this idea in your head of where should we be today? She says, is it right to be watching strangers in a play in the strangest of theaters and this kind of quality? And she doesn't. By strangers, I don't think she just means the human folk. She means also the hummingbird, the stonework, any view instantly seen and always, always delightful. Oh, must we dream our dreams and have them too? What an amazing line. And tell me about what that brings up for you.

[Richard Blanco]

Well, that line especially, I've used that epigraph, and I don't know how many poems I think I've tried, but the one of should we have stayed at home and thought of here? Maybe that's the question of my life. But it connects also to the quote from Pascal, which, if I'm not mistaken, what she's referring to says,

[Richard Blanco Reading]

the sole

[Richard Blanco]

cause of a man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly at home.

[Kevin Young]

Right, Right.

[Richard Blanco]

And this was during a time in my life where I was traveling a lot in search of that, again, that proverbial home, that proverbial paradise, that Eden, whatnot. And when I went back to this poem and realized where that Pascal reference came from, I was like, what am I doing?

[Kevin Young]

What is it?

[Richard Blanco]

Maybe home is in your own backyard.

[Kevin Young]

Right.

[Richard Blanco]

And it's just human nature to serve the proverbial greener GR on the other side. Right. I guess. Also, I love really smart thinking with very sort of clear, concise language.

[Jason Adam Katzenstein]

Right.

[Richard Blanco]

It's not the thought I always tell my students, you know. Oh, that whole show don't tell thing. Well, you can tell as long as the telling is really interesting.

[Jason Adam Katzenstein]

Sure.

[Richard Blanco]

Yeah. As long as the thought is complex and makes you go. And I think she's great. She's great at doing this in all her work and especially in this poem. You know, accessible language, but yet at the same time, really complex thoughts. And I think I love that combination in this poem.

[Kevin Young]

I love also, as you said, she's sort of observing in a way. I think of her always as kind of painting this picture. And often she's writing about pictures. Often she's concerned with the image of the thing she has that great poem, large, bad picture, or these kind of ways that she's thinking through what it means to see. And here she's thinking, I think, also about what it means to write. And you have this moment toward the end or at the end, where she says, never to have studied history and never have had to listen to rain. So much like politicians, speeches. Two hours of unrelenting oratory and then a sudden golden silence. I love that idea of comparing this very natural thing to something that she makes feel pretty unnatural, unrelenting oratory, which we've all experienced in different ways. But then this makes her write, this silence. How do you take that? Is that it's a strange way to end a poem. Someone else might end in this silence or end in the notebook being taken out. Instead, she gives you what this writer, presumably her, which is another thing we have to talk about in a minute, gives us. I mean, how do you take that ending?

[Richard Blanco]

Well, that's a. That's an interesting point, especially in our day right now, where there is a lot of relentless oratory, right? And one of the beauties, what I see there, which I think about whenever I write a poem that's also sort of social, political or whatnot, is that the poem in contrast to this, to all this barrage of information and abstraction, the poet, the artist, when it brings a real name, real faces, real experience, real witness to these issues. And then that's why I do. What I do is to ground these otherwise issues that just get lost in the media. But of course, that's something that's in my mind very much today. But I also think in that moment, I always like to say that my poems are smarter than me. And I think the act of writing there is sort of where, you know, she's asking all these questions, right? And then at the end, it's sort of like well, the only way I can really answer them.

[Kevin Young]

And.

[Richard Blanco]

But it's also very meta, right. Because she's writing a poem that's writing in her notebook. And you could almost see, like, maybe she started with a notebook.

[Kevin Young]

Right.

[Richard Blanco]

And then wrote the poem. But how I come to the page to just figure out all those complexities and also how it is that I truly feel or think about something. And one thing that you said earlier, Kevin, about, like, how she's just. How do we see.

[Jason Adam Katzenstein]

Right.

[Richard Blanco]

And this is partly something. I don't know if you read this in between the lines, but I feel like an incredible fragility in the middle of all this. Like, I'm almost rendering this place because I need to understand who I am in the world.

[Kevin Young]

Sure.

[Richard Blanco]

And there's also, like, sort of, as would be maybe a woman of that time in poetry. Right. But it's very controlled. It's very like, you know, okay, I'm asking these questions, but. But I always see in her work, like, this underlying, like, almost a painful question of how do I belong in this landscape? I can see them, but where am I in them? Right.

[Kevin Young]

Well, I mean, she. She almost makes it quite explicit. She says, is it lack of imagination that makes us come break to imagine places, not just stay at home? And then there's that kind of slant rhyme, come and home and then. Or could Pascal have been not entirely right about just sitting quietly in one's room? You also have room. Another kind of slant rhyme there with the M sounds. But what I love is that she doesn't say, could Pascal have been wrong? He could not been entirely right. She's always caging these kind of questions. And even the structure here where she starts saying, you know, these are the questions I have. And then it's like, but surely it would have been a pity. And then she talks about beauty, and then she says a word which you pronounce better than I think I can pronounce. So forgive me, noble pantomimists, you know, like a. You know, like an odd thing to have. Noble pantomimist, you know, like a worst poet would use that for the title of their book, you know. But she brings it in and it somehow fits like these kind of pantomime of gesturing nobly. But then it's like, here's all the things that I wouldn't have been able to do not to have had to stop for gas. A pity not to have heard. Yes. A pity not to have pondered. And I almost feel like she's convincing herself. Or is she convincing you know, who's she talking to there?

[Richard Blanco]

Yeah. I think there's. You know, it's this idea, like every poem is in some ways a conversation between the poet and themselves, and then that someone gets to overhear. Right?

[Kevin Young]

Yes.

[Richard Blanco]

But. Yeah, I love that questioning. I think she's talking to herself as much as the reader. But I also. There's another point that I found really interesting. And when she says, in another country, the clogs would be tested.

[Kevin Young]

Right, Right.

[Richard Blanco]

Like, that's so out of the blue.

[Kevin Young]

Yes.

[Richard Blanco]

But it's even in brackets. Right?

[Kevin Young]

Yes.

[Richard Blanco]

So that this is another moment where you can see her wandering. Right. Her questioning.

[David Remnick]

How.

[Kevin Young]

Right.

[Richard Blanco]

Who would. Who would think of that?

[Kevin Young]

Yeah. No, it's a peculiar. And she has it in parentheses, but she doesn't take it out. I mean, it's a little like that moment in one art, her villanelle, with that wonderful repetition where at the end she has that parentheses where she says, write it.

[Richard Blanco]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Young]

And she has to sort of convince herself, like, she has to step back and say, I gotta get this in there. And as you know, that part of the art of losing was incredibly long. All this discourse about her pain and being very honest about it. And it all comes down to writing. And I think you're absolutely right. She has this kind of tension beyond the brackets. I mean, everything is kind of parenthetical and bracketed and closed off. And she's really always questioning in some way. And I think that's what people. And you put your finger right on it sometimes, Ms. In Bishop is they just read the surface, you know, which, as you point out, is easy to do, to blaze through. And really, there's a lot of conflict in the observation.

[Richard Blanco]

Yeah, definitely. I've always thought about one art in that way, and it makes me think about. And it's just such a great choice to write a villanelle about that. But remember in grade school, I don't know if you ever got in trouble when you write, I will not talk in class. I will not talk, like a hundred times. But it's always like, if I write this enough times, if I say it enough time, I will believe it.

[Kevin Young]

Right, right.

[Richard Blanco]

But because I'm really questioning, not saying it well.

[Kevin Young]

And you see that in those parts of. She repeats words, traveling, traveling. There's that other moment where she says, must we dream our dreams? There's this kind of repetition of acts. What's it mean to travel once? But what's traveling, traveling? I mean, that's more than twice. That's like Going and going and going and going. And this sense of eternity in some way, but also a sense of these mountains look like ships, but they're capsized ships. They're not taking us on. This odyssey, though. The Odyssey, of course, which is in the news a lot right now, is also like a journey of peril. But they're slime hung and barnacled. You know, they're worn and kind of eerie. And I love that about it.

[Richard Blanco]

And it's funny because I've read this poem God knows how many times. And reading it today, I just realized that little comma between traveling, traveling. And it's like you could repeat it almost again. Travel like this relentless. How traveling can be just tiring too.

[Kevin Young]

Sure.

[Richard Blanco]

And you go nowhere. You're going everywhere, but you're going nowhere at the same time.

[Kevin Young]

Well, and the self is there with you. And why do you think she doesn't have the I in this poem, which she plays with in different ways? But in that poem, say a poem like one art or waiting room, you know, the eye is very present. Why absent the eye?

[Richard Blanco]

I think in part, if I think about the psychology of when. When you're traveling, right. You're almost like displaced. You know, there's like. Like another version of you that's there, that's not you. And I think that's partly besides the obvious reason that it lets the reader in. Because I think this is a universal feeling in some ways that we all have when we travel. Right, Right. But I think, yeah, you're a little estranged from yourself. You're like someone else. Because to. You get to be someone else.

[Kevin Young]

Right.

[Richard Blanco]

You know, you don't come with all the bag I said or whatever, all the good stuff, all the bad stuff. But you're displaced in a great way. And I think even when she. When the writer. Where does she say, says the traveler takes a notebook. You know, it's her. Right, Right, right. But, yeah, I think that's part of it. I know that weird feeling sometimes. Especially when you're traveling and you're between places and so, yeah.

[Kevin Young]

Do you think this is a poem of between?

[Richard Blanco]

It seems, because there might be. I see her moving between one space, another, Say, a reference to the gas station. I've been through these landscapes, actually, because I've been stalking Elizabeth Bishop for all of her houses. And I even. I even got a Brazilian boyfriend. Like she had a Brazilian girlfriend. Thinking I could, but I stayed in the same state. So I saw these same images. Yeah. And be the one in Key West.

[Kevin Young]

And then one in north is amazing. Yeah. And so what's your impression of following in these spaces, which I think is such a powerful thing to do? Do you feel like it connects you to her when you see them? Do you feel like you're retracing? Do you feel like there's an homage? Or you feel like you're just traveling, traveling?

[Richard Blanco]

I think I feel a real connection, I would say, in the house in Key west, before they had completely restored it. Or now it's the offices, I think, for the Key west literary seminars. But you could go in, but you couldn't go inside the house. You could only go around the yard. And I started touching the walls and, like, crying, like. I can't explain it. It's one of those poets. So I should say why I can't exactly explain it. And this is sometimes what I speak about, this poem and the bishop's work in general. It's one thing when you find yourself in a work that you expect to

[Richard Blanco Reading]

find yourself in, in my case, you

[Richard Blanco]

know, any Latinx poet.

[Jason Adam Katzenstein]

Right.

[Richard Blanco]

And that's powerful, too, and empowers us in many different ways. But it's really, really powerful when you start to see yourself in some other person. That or a writer, you know, born in Wooster. I can't even. I can't spell that and barely pronounce it. Some Grant, you know, New England grand Dom. You know, like, what does that have to do with a little gay kid, Cuban kid from Miami? And yet I think it's so powerful and it makes me, as a writer, think if I have this bond with her, someone not like me could hopefully have that bond with my work as well. Right. So I think it's that point of connection through art itself that is so surprising, unexpected, and perhaps even more powerful than if I went into a poem expecting to. To connect with it and that she kind of creeps up on me when we're talking about one art. When I first read it, I'm like, what's the big deal? And then I didn't know it was a villanelle because it's written so beautifully and it's so naturally that. But, yeah, I think that's what's always stayed with me. And it's a personal. I almost feel like I wish I gotten made her, but I almost feel like this is someone. Yeah. A soul poet, if you will. In some ways.

[Kevin Young]

Do you feel like her being in Brazil in this poem, and as you said, sort of, you know, she wasn't just there living. She fell in love there. Lived there For a good while. Do you feel like that's part of your attraction to her work? And, you know, in a weird way, all of that's in here, as you point out, but it's not mentioned, you know, so there's this kind of interesting tension and a reluctance that she has. Is it reticence? Is it repression? You know, like, how do you read that silence?

[Richard Blanco]

Well, I may be misreading it, but it's also right a time when writing about what was happening personally in her life. She's never been. Let's face it, she's not ever really been, like, wearing her heart on her sleeve. Right? But if you think about that time period and not only living in Brazil, for an American poet, right. That's like crazy, right? But also being gay. And I think all those things serve naturally, like, not. I don't think she was afraid to write about it, per se, but I just think it unfolded in a different way, in a way that perhaps we get the freedom as contemporary writers to go right to the point, right to it. And so I think that's part of it, you know, maybe I've always suspected, emotionally, I'm not necessarily in the work, that maybe she had to go there to escape these confines of the US poetry scene back then, you know, and also her sexuality, I think that all came together. It was all about. I think all those things in some ways were related.

[Kevin Young]

Well, it seems like maybe that's one of the questions she has, is we were talking about the negation, because so much of the poem is about negation. Oh, never to have done this, never to have done that, which she's already clearly done. But then there's also this quality of what you do find, the answers you have come across. And I think, for me, there's a clue in the penultimate lines where she says, continent, city, country, society, which, you know, society is kind of the odd one out there in a way. The choice is never wide and never free. Yeah, I mean, this is exactly what you're saying. She puts it in such a beautiful, lovely way. It almost flies by us, but then it rhymes. Should we have stayed at home, wherever that may be? And it applies, or at least to me, kind of indicts or underscores or however you want to put it, exactly what you're saying. Maybe she does have to leave. The choice is never wide and never free. This is very different than the never to have studied history and the weak calligraphy of songbirds, cages, which does sound amazing to have done, you know, like. So she's talking about history, but she's also talking about place and displacement.

[Richard Blanco]

Yeah. And it's interesting when we think about travel or, well, the romanticism of traveling or even living elsewhere.

[Jason Adam Katzenstein]

Right.

[Richard Blanco]

It's kind of the opposite. You feel like, oh my God, the world is so big and wide and I can do anything I want because I'm now living somewhere else and, and whatnot. And it's. She's understanding the reverse. What's that saying, no matter where you go, there you are. So. Yeah, that, that is, that is a moment that again, the unexpected and the. Like you're saying sometimes the contradictions because. Well, I would say, you know, I think we know as poets. Right. Like, often, sometimes I come into the page convinced about what I feel about something and realize the question is so much more complex. And not only complex, but contradictory.

[Kevin Young]

Yes.

[Richard Blanco]

And I mean, both sides of that contradiction can be true.

[David Remnick]

Yes.

[Richard Blanco]

And that's what I love about this poem in particular, but also, of course, her work in general.

[Kevin Young]

Well, well said. It's been a treat to read through this poem with you and think through some of these things and revisit. Bishop so thank you so much for talking with us about this. More for my conversation with Richard Blanco after the break.

[Richard Blanco]

Comprehensive, witty, speculative, critical, insightful, profound, wide ranging.

[Alex Schwartz]

Hopefully doesn't take itself too, too seriously.

[Decagon AI Narrator]

I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, my colleagues and I try to make sense of

[Richard Blanco]

what's happening in this chaotic world. I hope you'll join us for the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Alex Schwartz]

Thoughtful, exquisite, just, you know, real. Your living space is your sanctuary and you want it to feel like an expression of you, right? But unless you're working with an unlimited budget, sometimes that's easier said than done. And that's why I love Wayfair. I don't think there's a room in my house that doesn't have a little something from Wayfair. With their breathtaking selection, shockingly affordable prices, and incredibly easy delivery process, making my space feel like me was a snap. Wayfair offers everything you need for your home, yard or office. Seating, grills, appliances, storage, lighting, rugs, decor, and so much more. And if working at Allen Key isn't your thing, they can handle delivery, installation and assembly. You just pick what you want and they deal with the rest. With over 20 million 5 star reviews, you can shop with confidence, see real customers, real homes, real feedback before anything hits your cart, especially in the summer months. My porch is truly my happy place. I like to have my coffee in the cotton weave chair hammock and then read for a bit on the gorgeous wooden porch swing. Both Wayfair finds. Do I sleep in a Wayfair bed frame at night? Actually, I do. And I'm not mad about it. Ready to upgrade your home for way less? Head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home and get your space ready for less. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com Wayfair Every style, every home.

[Kevin Young]

I'm Vincent Cunningham.

[Richard Blanco]

I'm Nomi Frye.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm Alex Schwartz and we host Critics at Large from the New Yorker.

[Richard Blanco]

Each week we pick a starting point, the new novel you can't stop thinking about, the movie everybody's seeing this weekend. And we kind of go galaxy brand with it, right?

[Alex Schwartz]

We take the ideas at end, the center of these things and trace them across history, across mediums, all to get to the bottom of why this particular text is important right now in politics and culture and also in your everyday life. We go highbrow, we go lowbrow, we

[Richard Blanco]

go everything in between. Food culture to meme culture, Charli XCX to Toni Morrison, K Pop to the

[Alex Schwartz]

Kennedys, from horror movies to heated rivalry,

[Kevin Young]

from the Oscars to the Met Gala,

[Alex Schwartz]

the Golden Bachelor to Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations to Desperate Housewives.

[Richard Blanco]

That's what we're talking about over here. We're having fun. It's Critics at Large from the New

[Kevin Young]

Yorker every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. Richard, welcome back.

[Richard Blanco Reading]

Hi.

[Kevin Young]

Now, in our February 11, 2019 issue, the new Yorker published your poem My Father in English, which you'll read for us in a moment. Is there anything you want to say about the poem first?

[Richard Blanco]

Well, certainly many things. But I will say I think one thing that's extremely interesting even to me was this is from my book how to Love a Country. And the book was about 90%. It was already sort of in copy edit stages almost.

[Richard Blanco Reading]

And I thought, I don't have a

[Richard Blanco]

poem about my father in this book. And I had a couple by my mom and I thought, well, let me throw that in just for balancing the subject matter and whatnot. And so I wrote this poem. I was low stakes, right? Because I was like, the book's almost done and it's amazing where poems come, how poems come to you and when they come to you. So I remember as you hear in this poem, this little tidbit about my father and language that had always stayed with Me and I just sat down and wrote this poem almost in one sitting, which is. All right. We know that's not what usually happens in poetry land.

[David Remnick]

Yeah.

[Richard Blanco]

And. And to boot, my first poem in the New Yorker. So sometimes. Sometimes the stars align, but it speaks to creative process. And sometimes when you take the pressure off, things come bubbling up. So. But yeah, it's just a little snippet of a memory that this whole poem grew from in a rather very organic. In a quick way.

[Kevin Young]

Wonderful. Why don't we listen to the poem? Here's Richard Blanco reading his poem. My Father in English.

[Richard Blanco Reading]

My father in English. First half of his life lived in Spanish. The long syntax of las montanas that lined his village. The rhyme of Sol with his soul, a Cuban alma that swayed with las palmas. The sharp rhythm of his machete cutting through Caia, the syllables of his canarios, that song into la brisa of the island home. He left to spell out the second half of his life in English. The vernacular of New York City. Sleet, neon, glass, and the brick factory where he learned to Polish steel 12 hours a day, enough to save, enough to buy a used Spanish English dictionary. He kept bedside like a Bible, studied 15 new words after his prayers each

[Richard Blanco]

night, then practiced them on us the next day. Buenos dias. Indeed, my family.

[Richard Blanco Reading]

Indeed. Mas cafe.

[Richard Blanco]

Have a good day today?

[Richard Blanco Reading]

Indeed.

[Richard Blanco]

And again in the evening. Gracias to my bella wife.

[Richard Blanco Reading]

Indeed. For dinner.

[Richard Blanco]

Isis to homework.

[Richard Blanco Reading]

Indeed. La vida is indeed difficile. Indeed did indeed become his favorite word, which, like the rest of his new life, he never quite grasped. Overused and misused, often to my embarrassment. Yet the word I most learned to love and know him through. Indeed, the exile who tried to master the language he chose to master him. Indeed, the husband who refused to say I love you in English to my mother. The man who died without true translation, indeed meaning in fact, in effecto, meaning in reality, the echo, meaning to say now what I always meant to tell him in both languages. Thank you, gracias for surrendering the past tense of your life so that I might conjugate myself here in the present of this country, in truth, indeed, that

[Kevin Young]

was my father In English by Richard Blanco. Thank you for this beautiful and vivid portrait. I mean, it's such a great portrait, and I think it's such a powerful evocation of language imagination. His Spanish English dictionary kept us bedside like a Bible. And I loved this kind of figure that you've created, starting with, you know, the Spanish in the beginning and soul with his soul, a Cuban Alma that suede. You know, there's these rhymes that you create that are so melodic that come and change right there in the middle with that kind of, you know, buenos dias, indeed, my family, you know. And the rhyme becomes almost the repetition instead of, like, sonic rhyme. How did you think of that? You know, in terms of just that long syntax of the beginning and then sort of like the. The more, I don't know, blunt of the middle.

[Richard Blanco]

Well, I think, you know, so I guess the whole trope, or sort of controlling metaphor, this whole poem is language Right. Itself. And often thinking about the beauty of Spanish as compared to perhaps, English, though each language has their pluses and minuses, but the. Well, not the beauty, but the melody of Spanish and what it must have felt like for him to have to experience life in a different. In a different sonic qualities, like you said. So I wanted to sort of, you know, bring that in to the ear, right. About, you know, about Cuba and whatnot. And then I. I would hear my dad speak, obviously, English and Spanish, and then the English was very formal because he was learning English. And then he would always be like. Which is natural, but. But. But it was like. That didn't sound like my father.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah, yeah.

[Richard Blanco]

And he would always ask me actually how to use the word correctly. Indeed. I'm like. I don't know.

[Richard Blanco Reading]

I'm 12.

[Richard Blanco]

Like, I have no idea what part of speech this is. I just. I just know dad, like, at night. Of course, he always used to say it because it made him feel like he sounded more intelligent.

[Jason Adam Katzenstein]

Right.

[Richard Blanco]

I love. But. And then the idea of, like, the way that he gave up a language for me. I mean, yeah, he gave up a life, but he also gave up a whole way of thinking in the world for the sake of my. For lack of a better word, for the American dream kind of thing.

[Kevin Young]

Well, it's beautifully put in there. And I love this word. I mean, even that. That's his favorite word indeed, which you. You so cleverly, you know, La vida is indeed difficile, indeed, did indeed become break his favorite word, which, like the rest of his new life, break, he never quite grasped. Overused and misused often break, to my embarrassment. And I'm overemphasizing the breaks because it has a real control. I mean, just looking at it on the page, it's like a solid block. And in a weird way, having that kind of sturdiness, I guess, is the sameness kind of underscores a lot of what you're talking about. It's both about Sameness, or trying to conform, let's call it. And then also breaking the mold. I mean, it has this really great tension in there. So I love that. But indeed, as a word, it's such a. As you put it, what kind of part of speech is that? Like, what is that? But we know when it's not quite right. But also, what does it mean? It means in action or in a deed. And there's this kind of deed that you're mentioning that he's done for you. And then there's almost like this kind of a deed, like property deed, you know, there's a kind of inheritance that you're. You're trying to discuss. And it's just a. You know, I know it's true, but it also is. You make much Of. Of this truth of. Indeed.

[Richard Blanco]

Thanks. Couldn't have said it better myself. But no, literally, I love when this happens because you're making me think as. As, you know, it probably happens with your own work. Sometimes people say something, you're like, oh, man. Like, yeah, because he's also insisting that he belongs here, right? Indeed, like, yes, I'm convince him like a bishop, almost like, ind, indeed, I can be here, and I'm gonna make it happen here, and it's gonna be my life. And I'm gonna learn English, damn it.

[Kevin Young]

Yes, yes. And so different, rather than questions of travel, it's kind of an insistence on belonging, let's say. And I think that's really powerful. And also, you know, it almost in conversation with bishop, it makes you think, well, bishops can be strange. She's allowed to go wherever she wishes in a way. I mean, she has lim. We all do, but she is. There's a kind of power that she has just as an observer. And he doesn't exactly get to do that. You, as poet are the inheritor who gets to observe. And he has to, as he does in the beginning, act and then experience sleet neon glass. I mean, the vernacular of New York City. I love that line. Sleet neon glass, that nails in three words the kind of feeling of a New York winter or of a New York street. And then after what I'm going to call the hinge of him speaking. There's your reflection about that. You know, tried to master the language. He chose to master him. That's such an interesting way to phrase what we were talking about. The husband who refused to say I love you in English. What does that mean to you now, seeing it in black and white, as it were.

[Richard Blanco]

Well, I'll go a little further down in the poem to answer that question as well. Because of course, I also learned something about my own relationship with language. Right. But later I had to look up what indeed was in Spanish, because I was not. Now I'm curious from the other side. And so. And it also is kind of a weird word because it means an effector. And so at the end, I'm combining both languages. His, his language, his world, and my world. But I still say this often. I cuss, I make love in Spanish and I think in English. But there are certain words, maybe just like with him, that are like, I can't translate and use in Spanish or certain idioms or phrases. Right. And I don't know, it's made me think what a great luxury I had, which he didn't quite have to actually be able. Maybe like Bishop, I can move between these two linguistic worlds, but he can't really. And it was never really able to. And, and, and that has limitations on one's experiences too.

[Jason Adam Katzenstein]

Right.

[Richard Blanco]

So. So it made me think about my. Yeah. My own relationship with language and how that related not only to him, but the life that I lead through. And I mean, sometimes I just get so tired of English. I'll be talking to somebody and I'll just like start thinking in Spanish because I especially. I've been talking all day and I just have to go into Spanish as a way of giving my mind this palate cleanser.

[Kevin Young]

Do you think of that as your mother tongue or native language or how do you think of that?

[Richard Blanco]

Actually, I've never, as far as I can remember, I don't remember ever not knowing two languages. And maybe that's why this poem also came out of me like blah. In like one blah.

[Kevin Young]

Because it is a bilingual poem. It is a poem about switching about, you know, at the end. Our readers may know already, but hearing it. Thank you. Slash, gracias. You know, like, you have those kind of slashes. And that's sort of where the poet exists as well, you're saying?

[Richard Blanco]

Yeah, yeah. And I think what happened, this is a question that I just answered for myself just a few years ago, because I was still like, why am I a poet? I mean, of all the possible arts to go into. Right. And for our listeners might not know, I've been a practicing civil engineer all my life, and I think it had to do like I was saying. And don't I remember not knowing two language. And I was effectively the first person in my family to learn English. So I remember translating to my parents, for my parents, when I was five years old. You know, not whole sentences. I mean, not whole conversations, but they would ask me, how do you say this? How do you say that?

[Kevin Young]

Right.

[Richard Blanco]

And so at an early age, I. I never took language for granted. I also saw language as not just a form of communication, but of a way of breathing and thinking about the world, a way of being and also power. I mean, you're translating for your parents, and that's. You're like five years old. Like, what do you mean? You don't know that?

[David Remnick]

Right, right.

[Richard Blanco]

And I think all. All that sort of came in some ways also is in this poem. But. And I think that's why I became a poet, essentially because there is that fascination for language. So from almost virtually from the day I was born.

[Kevin Young]

Sure, sure. Well, and I love that Bishop's poem ends with a kind of translation of her stepping back and the traveler recording in her notebook. And this poem is so aware of it and of that kind of idea. I love that both of your poems let in other speakers and voices, you know, And. But at the end, do you feel like he isn't translated, or is this poem the act of true translation for him? Is this a reparation of that or a memorial? How do you think of this poem now?

[Richard Blanco]

Yeah, it's interesting. And a lot of my work in general, I have a really close friend who's a translator and translated my third book of poetry. We used to have all these great conversations about what is translation. And he told me, I'm not translating your book. I'm putting it back in the original language in which it happened. So every one of my poems is a translation. Well, not everyone, but everyone that has to deal with the elder's family, childhood memories, already a translation. And in some ways, I think what I feel. Well, I think at the end here it comes to. About gratitude and whatnot. But I think part of my. Part of that dimension of my work was to pay honor to them, to make sure their stories aren't forgotten, and in a way, by translating them.

[David Remnick]

Right.

[Richard Blanco]

Because not only in terms of socioeconomically, where they're not going to be able to do that, but they weren't able to. We're not going to. Able to do that because of the language. So all this is in some way tribute to. To. To my father as well, you know. Yeah. I am translating him, and he was never quite translated because I can never capture him either completely.

[Jason Adam Katzenstein]

Sure.

[Richard Blanco]

But I think that's. Every poem of mine is an attempt to translate their lives. And I love that, especially the early work, that was a real driving force.

[Kevin Young]

I love how you put that. I want to ask lastly about sort of the public nature of poetry, and maybe it's a kind of translation in a different way. And, you know, we often think of poetry as private or far from the public eye. But you've been a poet, but very much in the public eye. How do you approach that? What do you think about that? Having been the inaugural poet or poet Lord of Miami Dade county, and I know you were also the education ambassador for the Academy of American Poets. How do you think of this public nature of poetry?

[Richard Blanco]

Well, it's something I've had to think, obviously, a lot more since being presidential inaugural poet and such a public. It's arguably the most public moment for poetry where millions of people hear one poem and writing an occasional poem for that moment, which we're never really taught about those things in our master's programs. So I've had time to think a lot about that and what I discovered. I think sometimes we mistake what an occasional poem is or where we think it's just about the occasion, but really it's about what you, as a poet, feel about the occasion that you have in common with your listeners, with your perceived listeners. But isn't that what we're doing when we write a personal poem as well? Right. We're translating, if you will. Right. Or finding a way through art, through craft to, you know, the occasion of my dad's language or whatever. Every poem to me now became an occasion because I want to talk about something I remember or something I experienced. And I'm still sort of. The idea is, where's that common ground.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah.

[Richard Blanco]

And that's where the art comes in. And I think that was the big lesson for me. And earlier versions of the. Of the presidential inaugural poem, I had no first person whatsoever. I had no reference to my mother or my father. And after I looked at it, I was like, no, damn it. I. Where. Where's the poet in this poem? I'm a real human being. I'm not a talking head, you know, like.

[Kevin Young]

And you couldn't have just traveler like Bishop. Right.

[Richard Blanco]

Well, even. Even that you can tell it's her. Right. But so I learned that it's helped me to understand how my more personal poems work and how also occasional poems work. And also. Maybe I'm just one of those writers, but maybe it's also. Speaking of language, I get a pass because my parents don't. Well, my dad passed away when I was 55, but my mother doesn't read my poetry. She just, I mean, she can certified

[Richard Blanco Reading]

a grade school level of English, but

[Richard Blanco]

you can't catch all these nuances. So in a way, I've never, I know that a lot of posts and granted, I'm not writing about traumatic, you know, trauma stuff, but I've always felt protected by language in a way. But also ever since I started writing it. This is for public consumption. This is not just for me. This is for. This is written so that others can understand themselves, their family, their experiences, their memories. And I think that happens as, as you well know, that the. It's by adhering to the art where there's. This is Richard Blanco, the poet, the Persona of the poet, not the guy that has to change the cat litter, not the guy who's screaming at people in I95, you know, and, and in some ways it's me and it's not me, right? So I feel protected by art. That, that is a wonderful sort of, I wouldn't say a shield, but it's. It's another me that is the one who's. It's the better me, right? The truer me. And that's the one that's speaking and sharing and whatnot. I'm just, you know, I'm changing the cat litter. And I just want to say one little thing, Kevin. I don't think I ever. Maybe I got to thank you for it. But your editorial suggestion was so right on, and I've passed it on to a lot of my students. The original title, if you remember, was My Father in English Indeed. And you told me, take the indeed out, let the reader discover that. So thank you for that. And that stayed with me. And I've passed that on to my writing students as well.

[Kevin Young]

Anytime. Thanks so much, Richard.

[Richard Blanco]

My pleasure, Kevin.

[Kevin Young]

My Father in English by Richard Blanco, as well as Elizabeth Bishop's Questions of Travel, can be found on newyorker.com A new edition of Elizabeth Bishop's Complete Poems was published earlier this month. Month Richard Blanco's latest book is Homeland of My Body

[David Remnick]

to listen to new poetry from the New Yorker, as well as narrated fiction, reporting, criticism and more. Download the New Yorker App for more New Yorker literary audio, try the New Yorker Fiction Podcast or the Writer's Voice, which presents new fiction read by the author. You can find those and other New Yorker podcasts by searching for the New Yorker in your podcast app. Let us know what you think of this podcast by rating and reviewing it in your podcast app. And please follow the show so that you don't miss new episodes. The New Yorker Poetry Podcast is Produced by John LeMay with help from Hannah Eisenman. The theme music is the Corner by Chief Zion Attunde Ajua, courtesy of Stretch Music and Rope a Dope. Thanks for listen.