"One Today" is a

poem Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...

Richard Blanco Richard Blanco (born February 15, 1968) is an American poet, public speaker, author, playwright, and civil engineer. He is the fifth poet to read at a United States presidential inauguration, having read the poem " One Today" for Barack Oba ...

first recited at the

second inauguration of Barack Obama The second inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States was the 57th inauguration, marking the commencement of his second and final term, with Joe Biden as vice president. This is the most recent presidential inauguration wher ...

, making Blanco the fifth poet to read during a

United States presidential inauguration Between seventy-three and seventy-nine days after the presidential election, the president-elect of the United States is inaugurated as president by taking the presidential oath of office. The inauguration takes place for each new president ...

. "One Today" was called "a fine example of public poetry, in keeping with Blanco’s other work: Loose, open lines of mostly conversational verse, a flexible

iambic pentameter Iambic pentameter ( ) is a type of metric line used in traditional English poetry and verse drama. The term describes the rhythm, or meter, established by the words in each line. Meter is measured in small groups of syllables called feet. "Iambi ...

stanza form," by Ken Tucker in ''Entertainment Weekly''.

Background

Richard Blanco was asked to write three poems for the selection of the one to be read at the second inauguration of Barack Obama re-elected on his second term on November 6, 2012. "One Today" was chosen among "What We Know of Country" and "Mother Country". The poet said: "I wanted all three to be different facets of my writing, and my experiences, and how we can live in our country and be part of the union"

Analysis

"The images in the poem move from the universal to the specific, so that from out of the millions of nameless, faceless Americans one figure in particular emerges: the immigrant. This is where “One Today” does something very interesting: it shows us the exact point at which the story of the immigrant experience intersects with the myth of the American Dream." "Over the course of its nine stanzas (69 lines), “One Today” offers a sweeping view of America during a single day, from sunrise to sunset. The first stanza links geographically diverse areas of the country through the image of the rising sun:" The incipit is strongly alliterative. Almost each word recalls the following by

assonance Assonance is the repetition of identical or similar phonemes in words or syllables that occur close together, either in terms of their vowel phonemes (e.g., ''lean green meat'') or their consonant phonemes (e.g., ''Kip keeps capes ''). However, in ...

. A sort of raffinate anagrammatic playing, highlights "us" which is contained in the word "sun" and "rose" which is contained in "shores". The anaphoric "One" of the first and fifth line, emphasizes the diurnal light growing in intensity. The poem is characterised by a musical harmony given by the employment of figures of sound such as

alliteration Alliteration is the repetition of syllable-initial consonant sounds between nearby words, or of syllable-initial vowels if the syllables in question do not start with a consonant. It is often used as a literary device. A common example is " Pe ...

, assonance,

paromoiosis In rhetoric, paromoiosis is parallelism of sound between the words of two clauses approximately equal in size. The similarity of sound can occur at the beginning of the clauses, at the end (where it is equivalent to homoioteleuton Homeoteleuton, ...

, and several

onomatopoeic Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as ''oink'', '' ...

words such as "slide", "whistling", "brush". The style is mostly

nominal Nominal may refer to: Linguistics and grammar * Nominal (linguistics), one of the parts of speech * Nominal, the adjectival form of "noun", as in "nominal agreement" (= "noun agreement") * Nominal sentence, a sentence without a finite verb * Nou ...

and where the lyrical discourse proceeds for

asyndeton Asyndeton (, ; from the , sometimes called asyndetism) is a literary scheme in which one or several grammatical conjunction, conjunctions are deliberately omitted from a series of related clauses. Examples include ''veni, vidi, vici'' and its Engl ...

the speed of the rhythm creates breathtaking poetic-narrative sequences. On the other hand the employment of

prepositions Adpositions are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositions (which precede their complemen ...

deixis In linguistics, deixis () is the use of words or phrases to refer to a particular time (e.g. ''then''), place (e.g. ''here''), or person (e.g. ''you'') relative to the Context (language use), context of the utterance. Deixis exists in all known na ...

, particularly spatial deixis, makes images plastic and visual.

References

External links

* 2013 poems American poems Poems in English Inaugural poems Second inauguration of Barack Obama Cuban-American literature {{Poem-stub

Background

Analysis

See also

References

Further reading

External links