Recognizing LGBT+ poets on National Poetry Day
By Jordan Redman
Op-Ed
Today is #NationalPoetryDay. Through the years, poetry has helped the LGBT+ Community cope with love, loss, victories and devastation. Poetry allows for creative expression, an outlet so many of us are desperate for within the LGBT+ community. We salute the LGBT+ poets of our past and look forward to the poets of the future.
Everyone has their preference when it comes to the realm of poetry. Some come to understand the boundless interpretations of the written or spoken word easily, while others struggle with confusing poetry’s simplicity with complexity.
The LGBT+ Community has been well represented amongst poets dating back as far as Walt Whitman (1819-1892).
Springing forward a bit, Richard Blanco was chosen to serve as the inaugural poet at President Barack Obama’s second inauguration in 2013. This made him the first Latino, the first immigrant and the first openly gay person to ever do so. Blanco not only identifies as an openly gay man, but as an immigrant and a Cuban-American.
Read more stories about Richard Blanco:
For inaugural poet, a journey home to America
Inaugural poet launches Cuba writing project
America's inaugural poet visits Cuba amid warming with US
Richard Blanco named education ambassador for poets academy
There should be nothing here I don’t remember...
Notably one of my favorite of Blanco’s poems, is “Since Unfinished”. What is your favorite piece of LGBT+ poetry? Tell us on social media, visit our Facebook or Twitter.
Since Unfinished
I’ve been writing this since
the summer my grandfather
taught me how to hold a blade
of grass between my thumbs
and make it whistle, since
I first learned to make green
from blue and yellow, turned
paper into snowflakes, believed
a seashell echoed the sea,
and the sea had no end.
I’ve been writing this since
a sparrow flew into my class
and crashed into the window,
laid to rest on a bed of tissue
in a shoebox by the swings, since
the morning I first stood up
on the bathroom sink to watch
my father shave, since our eyes
met in that foggy mirror, since
the splinter my mother pulled
from my thumb, kissed my blood.
I’ve been writing this since
the woman I slept with the night
of my father’s wake, since
my grandmother first called me
a faggot and I said nothing, since
I forgave her and my body
pressed hard against Michael
on the dance floor at Twist, since
the years spent with a martini
and men I knew I couldn’t love.
I’ve been writing this since
the night I pulled off the road
at Big Sur and my eyes caught
the insanity of the stars, since
the months by the kitchen window
watching the snow come down
like fallout from a despair I had
no word for, since I stopped
searching for a name and found
myself tick-tock in a hammock
asking nothing of the sky.
I’ve been writing this since
spring, studying the tiny leaves
on the oaks dithering like moths,
contrast to the eon-old fieldstones
unveiled of snow, but forever
works-in-progress, since tonight
with the battled moon behind
the branches spying on the world—
same as it ever was—perfectly
unfinished, my glasses and pen
at rest again on the night table.
I’ve been writing this since
my eyes started seeing less,
my knees aching more, since
I began picking up twigs, feathers,
and pretty rocks for no reason
collecting on the porch where
I sit to read and watch the sunset
like my grandfather did everyday,
remembering him and how
to make a blade of grass whistle.
From Looking for The Gulf Motel. Copyright © 2012 by Richard Blanco. Reprinted by permission of University of Pittsburgh Press.
The Gayly - 9/28/2017 11:45 a.m. CST.