Slog Comments
Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco on the Homophobic Abuse That Led Him to Writing
1
Blanco is so right. It never leaves you. And the thing about growing up in an environment where the place you're supposed to be safe never is is it marks you differently at different points in your life. You'll be marching along and then - boom - you've stepped on a land mine and you're picking up the shrapnel again.
I think of it as having static in your brain. We can never know how much static is interfering with other people's lives, either, so as I've grown older I've tried to exercise more compassion toward people who seem even more dysfunctional than I am.
One question maybe others can speak to: does it get better when the abuser dies?
I think of it as having static in your brain. We can never know how much static is interfering with other people's lives, either, so as I've grown older I've tried to exercise more compassion toward people who seem even more dysfunctional than I am.
One question maybe others can speak to: does it get better when the abuser dies?
2
@1, along those lines, of the static we carry around at different times in our lives, Guy Branum has a pretty magnificent piece just up on HuffPo tying together Manti and Jodie and all of us. Seems really apropos to Blanco and IGBP too. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/guy-branum…
3
Actually Granny was right.
Whores and other sex workers have gotten their AIDS rate under control.
As has every other demographic group in American society.
Except for homosexual men.
Whose HIV rate continues to climb.
Whores and other sex workers have gotten their AIDS rate under control.
As has every other demographic group in American society.
Except for homosexual men.
Whose HIV rate continues to climb.
7
I did not care for the poem Mr. Blanco read at the inauguration. No surprise, no bite, a pretty lazy song.
9
This Be Verse
by Philip Larkin
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.”
― Philip Larkin
by Philip Larkin
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.”
― Philip Larkin
10
I don't know what a faggot means, really; don't even know about sex yet. All I know is she's talking about me, me; and whatever I am, is bad, very bad.
This is so familiar. I think I was about 8 years old when I found out that a lesbian was a bad thing and that other people said I was one, and it was years before I knew what the word meant, and more years before I realised it wasn't a bad thing and I (kinda) was one. We hear our words as playground insults years before we find them inside ourselves.
This is so familiar. I think I was about 8 years old when I found out that a lesbian was a bad thing and that other people said I was one, and it was years before I knew what the word meant, and more years before I realised it wasn't a bad thing and I (kinda) was one. We hear our words as playground insults years before we find them inside ourselves.
11
INAUGURAL POEM
—for Richard Blanco
“Better to have a granddaughter
who’s a whore than a grandson
who is un pato faggot like you”
—Richard Blanco, “Making a Man
Out of Me,” Who’s Yer Daddy?
Richard Blanco’s poem—
That he read that cold January
Day of the Inauguration
Caught America by surprise
Such a handsome Latino—
Born in Miami after Castro’s
Cuban Revolution and now
All these years later
But do things get better—
Does the abuse & bullying
Ever stop for our young gays
Exiling them to the Closet?
Did our Stonewall Riots—
And our Gay Revolution
Ever trickle down to the
Young exiles of today?
So much homophobia—
Intergenerational warfare
Like Blanco’s prejudicial
Cuban grandmother
Guilting the young poet—
For being effeminate and
Gay back when he was
Just seven years old
Philip Larkin knew it—
In his “This Be The Verse”
How they fuck you up, your
Parents and your peer group
They mean to, they want to—
They fill you with the faults
They had and add some extra
Especially just for you
Perhaps the only solution—
Letting the older generation
Finally kick the fucking bucket
Let Whitman back in town.
—for Richard Blanco
“Better to have a granddaughter
who’s a whore than a grandson
who is un pato faggot like you”
—Richard Blanco, “Making a Man
Out of Me,” Who’s Yer Daddy?
Richard Blanco’s poem—
That he read that cold January
Day of the Inauguration
Caught America by surprise
Such a handsome Latino—
Born in Miami after Castro’s
Cuban Revolution and now
All these years later
But do things get better—
Does the abuse & bullying
Ever stop for our young gays
Exiling them to the Closet?
Did our Stonewall Riots—
And our Gay Revolution
Ever trickle down to the
Young exiles of today?
So much homophobia—
Intergenerational warfare
Like Blanco’s prejudicial
Cuban grandmother
Guilting the young poet—
For being effeminate and
Gay back when he was
Just seven years old
Philip Larkin knew it—
In his “This Be The Verse”
How they fuck you up, your
Parents and your peer group
They mean to, they want to—
They fill you with the faults
They had and add some extra
Especially just for you
Perhaps the only solution—
Letting the older generation
Finally kick the fucking bucket
Let Whitman back in town.
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