Richard Blanco, the fifth presidential inaugural poet in U.S. history, joined Boston Public Radio last week for another edition of "Village Voice," and to talk about his new book, "How to Love a Country: Poems."
Blanco told BPR that the book is an amalgamation of different ideas and statements that use poetry for civic engagement, autobiographical explorations of identity, and “what it means to be an American.”
For Blanco, the poems in this book were a way for him to ground and contextualize our abstract reality.
"The arts brings us back to real lives, real people, real names, real faces, and creates empathy," he said.
