Poem taken from the LA Times
my comments in red after the first stanza. On the left is the poet, Richard Blanco, shaking hands with the President."One Today"
One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.
Well the first sentence is actually a sentence but unfortunately the second sentence (it starts with "One light..." isn't. The metaphor of the sun rising is inaccurate scientifically but used so often it doesn't really offend me. However, the sun being kindled is really an awful, awful metaphor because there isn't even a optical illusion to justify it. Also, how does a light wake up a rooftop? If it does, why is there exactly one story per rooftop? After all some people are away on business or travel and in some houses there are far more than one person (I assume it is people who have silent gestures). Still this isn't as bad as the 2009 poetry.
My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper -- bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us, on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives -- to teach geometry, or ring up groceries as my mother did for twenty years, so I could write this poem.
Both sentences in the second stanza are not sentences. The second one also implies that trucks clean tables, read ledgers, etc. The parallel between clean tables and save lives is very bad because the first is specific and the latter is general. The last phrase is pretty cloying. Did the author's mom really want him to write poetry with his life?
All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.
More sentence problems. Everybody is equally vital? Also the light that illuminates blackboards isn't the same as the light that woke up the rooftops - at least most of the time. Also we don't actually move through light because our bodies cast shadows.
One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.
Still more sentence problems. Wheat is sown by machine and frequently the tractors are even air conditioned. Coal isn't mined by hand, neither are windmills 'planted'. This poem is so verbose I'm now tired of commenting on it.
The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind -- our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.
Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across cafe tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,
buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me -- in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.
One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.
One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.
We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always -- home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country -- all of us --
facing the stars
hope -- a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it -- together
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