Richard Blanco is a Cuban – American poet who was given the oppurunity to write an inaugaration poem for Barack Obama’s second swearing-in. their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked What happens if the president doesn't accept the election results? Text of poem "One Today" written and recited by Richard Blanco at the ceremonial swearing-in ceremony of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, as …

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk We have a hint when he says, regarding the study of history, "we question history." He wrote a poem titled “One Today” that praised the good and unique things about the United States and also the everyday people who’s daily routines help to make America the proud country that it is. Nothing had actually taken us away from home. 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. The best image in this piece is the "plum blush of dusk." Unfortunately, the Howard Zinn-ization of history doesn't allow students to even know history, much less question history. onto the steps of our museums and park benches At this point, readers realize that they have been manipulated with all the "ones," beginning with the awkward title, "One Today." 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. breathing color into stained glass windows, always under one sky, our sky. One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores, Again, an absurd claim that the sky yields to our resilience offers itself as the posturing of postmodernist drivel that passes for poetry. We did, however, crescendo into our day, and the speaker has certainly alluded to a wide variety of workers who would have left home to work, but the very specific, "we head home," seems to come out of nowhere and fastens readers to a journey on which they had not necessarily been traveling. the empty desks of twenty children marked absent Alluding to the Newtown school shooting, the speaker refers to those dead children as being "marked absent / today and forever." Richard Blanco read his piece, "One Today," at the second inauguration of Barack Obama, January 21, 2013. of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love That poem is One Today, a lush and lyrical, patriotic commemoration of America from dawn to dusk and from coast to coast. creates global spiritual community, rooted in profound love, which cultivates wonder, imagination, and the courage to act. Be in the know. of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives— of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat The poem is an occasional poem (one written for a specific occasion). the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day: It is also an example of public poetry. But the real deficit of this final versagraph is the gratuitous aping of the Obamic notion of the collective. Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,

digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands

the unexpected song bird on your clothes line. mingled by one wind—our breath. "One Today" is a poem by Richard Blanco first recited at the second inauguration of Barack Obama, making Blanco the fifth poet to read during a United States presidential inauguration. Carpe diem, America. We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight