Richard Blanco was made in Cuba, assembled in Spain, and imported to the United States—meaning his mother, seven months pregnant, and the rest of the family arrived as exiles from Cuba to Madrid where he was born. Only forty-five days later, the family emigrated once more and eventually settled in Miami where he was raised and educated. His acclaimed first book, City of a Hundred Fires, explores the yearnings and negotiation of cultural identity as a Cuban-American, and received the prestigious Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press (1998). His second book,Directions to The Beach of the Dead (University of Arizona Press, 2005) won the 2006 PEN/American Beyond Margins Award for its continued exploration of the universal themes of home and place. In January 2013, he was invited to read a poem at President Obama's second inauguration. 

    Blanco’s poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies includingPloughshares, TriQuarterly, Michigan Quarterly, Best American Poetry 2000, Best American Prose Poems, and National Public Radio. He is recipient of a Bread Loaf Fellowship and a Florida Artist Fellowship. A former assistant professor, Blanco has taught at Georgetown, American University, and Connecticut State University. Currently, he is a board member and Vice-President of The Macondo Foundation, an association of writers founded by Sandra Cisneros united in their creative advancement and service to community. A builder of cities and poems, Blanco earned both a bachelors of science degree in Civil Engineering and a Master in Fine Arts in Creative Writing (1997). He currently lives in Bethel, Maine, where he writes and works as a consultant engineer.

Photo of a Man on Sunset Drive: 1914, 2008

BY RICHARD BLANCO

Groundbreaking Ceremony, City of South Miami, Sunset Drive Improvements

And so it began: the earth torn, split open

by a dirt road cutting through palmettos

and wild tamarind trees defending the land

against the sun. Beside the road, a shack

leaning into the wind, on the wooden porch,

crates of avocados and limes, white chickens

pecking at the floor boards, and a man

under the shadow of his straw hat, staring

into the camera in 1914. He doesn't know

within a lifetime the unclaimed land behind

him will be cleared of scrub and sawgrass,

the soil will be turned, made to give back

what the farmers wish, their lonely houses

will stand acres apart from one another,

jailed behind the boughs of their orchards.

He'll never buy sugar at the general store,

mail love letters at the post office, or take

a train at the depot of the town that will rise

out of hundred-million years of coral rock

on promises of paradise. He'll never ride

a Model-T puttering down the dirt road

that will be paved over, stretch farther and

farther west into the horizon, reaching for

the setting sun after which it will be named.

He can't even begin to imagine the shadows

of buildings rising taller than the palm trees,

the street lights glowing like counterfeit stars

dotting the sky above the road, the thousands

who will take the road everyday, who'll also

call this place home less than a hundred years

after the photograph of him hanging today

in City Hall as testament. He'll never meet

me, the engineer hired to transform the road

again, bring back tree shadows and birdsongs,

build another promise of another paradise

meant to last another forever. He'll never see

me, the poet standing before him, trying

to read his mind across time, wondering if

he was thinking what I'm today, both of us

looking down the road that will stretch on

for years after I too disappear into a photo.