Homeland of my body New and selected poems

Born in Spain to Cuban exiles, Blanco grew up in Miami, then traveled the globe before landing back in the U.S. and serving as Barack Obama's inaugural poet, the first gay person, the first Latino, and the first immigrant to do so. Drawn from his four books of poetry, from City of a Hundred Fires (2008) to How to Love a Country (2019), these selected poems reflect themes of gay identity, Cuban history, family migrations, and artistic intersections. The prose poem and ekphrasis have been favored forms across the poet's career (his muses are the mysterious photographer Paul Cordes and the French painter Jacques-Louis David). But it's in the evocative details that Blanco's gift for turning a phrase really shines, as in the regal "presidential stance of our pine trees" or the perfectly soothing "soft harp of snowfall." Over 30 new poems open and close this title, and they are just as tender and introspective. "I needed to hear the waves / break and break me into the lines of this poem." An exceptional mid-career snapshot of a trailblazing poet's remarkable journey.

This beautiful retrospective brings together selections from four of Blanco's previous books--including his most recent, How to Love a Country--as well as vital new poems. Blanco contemplates identity, belonging, memory, and place as he writes about home, family, and love with a reverent and empathetic eye. In "Splintering," he unflinchingly enacts the divide between body and soul, describing the moment when a child realizes what being is, as his mother tends to his wound: "I knew nothing of dying. Then she kissed/ the last bead of blood on my finger and said:/ I love you. Meaning what she'd love forever was more than my body, which suddenly split/ from me." The new offerings powerfully bookend the collection, contextualizing Blanco's expansive and impressive work. In "Become Me," a poem written to his husband, the weight of love and death finds transcendence in a place that never dies: "Become my lungs,/ their last gap, nerves firing through/ every scene of our loving. Become the soil/ of my soul. There's nothing more blessed/ than taking you with me into the ground." Blanco's expert command of craft and lyricism is evident in these pages as he offers readers a vision of the quintessential aspects that define humanity, even in the face of despair. (Oct.)