One Today

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2013

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Authorial Context: Richard Blanco

As the year 2013 began, Blanco was somewhat known among poetry enthusiasts for his three award-winning collections published between 1998 and 2012, but he was certainly not a household name. This changed dramatically at the second inauguration of President Barack Obama on January 21, 2013. An estimated national audience of 20 million people watched or listened on television, radio, and online as Blanco stood at the podium and read “One Today.” Millions more watched around the world.

In an interview with the Academy of American Poets published later that year, Blanco said that when he was commissioned to write the inaugural poem, the White House told him that the theme of the inauguration was “Faith in America’s Future” (“For All of Us, One Today: Richard Blanco in Conversation.” Poets.org, 2013). The inaugural committee gave him free rein to write whatever he wanted, suggesting only that the poem should take between and three and five minutes to read.

As he thought about his task, Blanco, who had immigrated with his parents to the United States, realized that he needed to look deeply at himself and consider “what it meant to be an American” (“For All of Us”). He had often felt that he did not quite fit the American ideal, an idea he had formed from watching old TV shows from the 1950s and 1960s that featured American kids who did not look like him. He had to figure out if, as an immigrant and a Latino, he really was an American and ask himself if he thought of the US as his true home. Moreover, he had to question if he loved his adopted country. After some reflection, he realized that he could answer all these questions in the affirmative.

When it came to the poem, Blanco knew that it should not be too autobiographical; it had to possess a grander, more universal theme. He wrote three poems before deciding that “One Today” was the most suitable for the occasion. The other two poems were titled “What We Know of Country” and “Mother Country.” Of “One Today,” he said that it asks the reader “to contemplate how each of us is an important, intrinsic part of a whole, and recognizing the importance of community, togetherness, and belonging” (“For All of Us”).

Literary Context: The Occasional Poem

“One Today” is an occasional poem. Occasional poems are written to memorialize specific occasions, such as a birthday, marriage, death, dedication of a building, military victory, or some other historical event. They are usually serious and dignified, as befitting the occasion. Examples include Edmund Spenser’s “Epithalamion” (1595), which celebrated Spenser’s marriage; John Milton’s “Lycidas” (1638), on the death of Edward King; and W. B. Yeats’s “Easter, 1916,” marking the Easter Rising against British rule in Ireland. Blanco himself has written another occasional poem: “Matters of the Sea,” or “Cosas Del Mar” in Spanish, which he read at the reopening of the US Embassy in Havana, Cuba, in August 2015.

Poems written to be recited at the inauguration of the US president are a comparatively recent phenomenon. In 1961, Robert Frost read “The Gift Outright” at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. President Bill Clinton invited poets to read at both his inaugurations. In 1993, Maya Angelou read “On the Pulse of Morning,” and in 1997, Miller Williams read “Of History and Hope.” President Barack Obama followed Clinton’s lead, inviting Elizabeth Alexander to read at his first inauguration in 2009—she read a poem titled “Praise Song for the Day”—and then Richard Blanco for his second inauguration in 2013. In 2021, Amanda Gorman read her poem “The Hill We Climb” at the inauguration of President Joe Biden.