Raised in a working-class, immigrant family, I didn’t have access to poetry. I want to write poetry that my mother can read, or poetry that I would h… - Richard Blanco

I really didn't end up coming out until much later in life ... and what really fascinated me as a writer and as an investigator is, how does that happen? How is it that moment by moment the next notch of courage, the next notch of self-understanding — even though you know you're gay at 12, 13, 14 [years old], those words can't even enter your mind. You can't even have the vocabulary; you don't say "Gee, I think I'm gay." No, it doesn't happen that way…

What’s more, I realized that I had an artistic duty and an emotional right to speak to, for, and about millions like myself from all walks of life who felt as marginalized as I did, given the various sociopolitical issues that historically and presently haunt America. All this unearthing culminated in the new collection, How to Love a Country, which indeed focuses on the intersectionality between the private and public self, the personal and political posture, and the individual and the collective identity of nationhood…

I would first need to acknowledge that the mere act of creating something that questions the world and one’s life in it, that exercises one’s imagination, or that even pens something simply for the sake of beauty, is a kind of politics because it is determined to create awareness of some kind in some context…