Looking for The Gulf Motel (Pitt Poetry Series) - Softcover

Blanco, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822962012 ISBN 13: 9780822962014

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012

Synopsis

Read "a collection of poems you will want to take with you, everywhere you go" (Indiana Review) by the 2013 inaugural poet for President Barack Obama.

Family continues to be a wellspring of inspiration and learning for Blanco. His third book of poetry, Looking for The Gulf Motel, is a genealogy of the heart, exploring how his family's emotional legacy has shaped―and continues shaping―his perspectives. The collection is presented in three movements, each one chronicling his understanding of a particular facet of life from childhood into adulthood. As a child born into the milieu of his Cuban exiled familia, the first movement delves into early questions of cultural identity and their evolution into his unrelenting sense of displacement and quest for the elusive meaning of home. The second, begins with poems peering back into family again, examining the blurred lines of gender, the frailty of his father-son relationship, and the intersection of his cultural and sexual identities as a Cuban-American gay man living in rural Maine. In the last movement, poems focused on his mother's life shaped by exile, his father's death, and the passing of a generation of relatives, all provide lessons about his own impermanence in the world and the permanence of loss. Looking for the Gulf Motel is looking for the beauty of that which we cannot hold onto, be it country, family, or love.

About this title

About the Author

Richard Blanco, named as the 2013 inaugural poet for President Barack Obama, is the author of two previous poetry collections: Directions to The Beach of the Dead, winner of the PEN/Beyond Margins Award; and City of a Hundred Fires, winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. Exploring themes of Latino identity and place, his poems have appeared in Best American Poetry 2000 and Best American Prose Poems and have been featured on NPR. Blanco is a fellow of the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, recipient of two Florida Artist Fellowships, and has taught at Georgetown and American universities. A builder of cities and poems, Blanco is also a professional civil engineer.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Excerpt from Looking for The Gulf Motel by Richard Blanco, Pages 39-40


The Port Pilot



Before I knew him as a butcher
coming home with bloodstains
on his cuffs that Mamá could never
wash out in the kitchen sink, before


I learned he’d spend all day in the sky
in loafers and a necktie, counting
other people’s money in a tower
with a view he couldn’t afford, years


before he started gambling with me
on cockfights at Tío Burili’s farm
every Saturday night, teaching me
how to bet on death, long before


he was diagnosed and staying alive
became his full-time job, his agenda
filled with appointments to kill
whatever was killing him, a lifetime


before I had to cradle him in and out
of bed, he carried me on his shoulders
over the jetty at the port, minutes after
I’m called to the hospital, I remember


that day: sitting together on a rock
watching the ships glide past us, when
he told me that years before he was
my father, he was a port pilot in Havana


steering ships safely into harbor, then
guiding them out to sea again, never
to see them again, seconds before I hear
his last breath, told to leave the room.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822962012
• ISBN 13: 9780822962014
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96