♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (singing in Spanish) ♪ ♪ ELISA NEW: The faraway sweetness of childhood, the ever-receding past, the cherished home-- these are classic, universal themes for poets.

And in this land of immigrants, and in the poetry of the United States, the yearning for lost youth is often layered on other yearnings-- for homeland, for ties cut, for the sights, and sounds, and flavors of a beloved culture and place left behind.

♪ ♪ Richard Blanco's narrative poem, "Looking for the Gulf Motel," is one of those works that seems to capture every American's past in its recollections of a Cuban-American boyhood.

RICHARD BLANCO: One of the things that has affected me culturally growing up as a child of Cuban exile immigrants is that it is always constantly about memory and it's always constantly about what was.

Remembering someone is appreciating them, right, or taking the time in a poem to remember them in detail and render them or re-render them is another act of love.

♪ ♪ Looking for the Gulf Motel.

Marco Island, Florida.

♪ ♪ There should be nothing here I don't remember...

The Gulf Motel with mermaid lampposts and ship's wheel in the lobby should still be rising out of the sand like a cake decoration.

My brother and I should still be pretending we don't know our parents, embarrassing us as they roll the luggage cart past the front desk loaded with our scruffy suitcases, two-dozen loaves of Cuban bread, brown bags bulging with enough mangos to last the entire week, our espresso pot, the pressure cooker-- and a pork roast reeking garlic through the lobby.

NEW: Whatever your background, these opening lines are likely to conjure images from your own album of memories.

This universality might be why President Barack Obama asked Richard to deliver a poem at his 2012 inauguration.

It's why I asked Richard to come to discuss his poem with me.

After Richard shared the home movies from his childhood his mother still kept, it's why I wanted to talk about the poem's images with some experts on childhood, as well as with some grown children of Cuban immigrants, including Richard's friend, recording artist and restauranteur Gloria Estefan.

(singing in Spanish) That says, "Your land... homeland calls to you" almost like there's this pull and we feel it so strongly because our parents hung on to that feeling.

Cuba was the best place.

The sugar was sweeter, the salt was saltier, everything smelled amazing.

Coppelia, which is a very famous ice cream place in the center of Havana, had 20-something flavors.

Everything was like that, everything was full of colors, the cars were shiny... CARLOS ALVAREZ: It was a very advanced country.

I always remember them saying that they were, like, one of the only countries in the world that had color TVs in those times.

♪ ♪ JORGE MORENO: You would drive around Havana and there's patios where people would just dance and there would be an orchestra playing.

Back then, it's probably Benny Moré.

(singing in Spanish) Lots of orchestra.

A lot of things are similar here in Florida to Cuba, when my parents grew up.

I mean, we're only 90 miles away.

BLANCO: It's like living between two real imagined worlds, my childhood home in Miami and the 1950s Cuba that my parents left.

ESTEFAN: This poem literally makes me go back into my past.

First of all, the food-- bringing all the food.

NEW: I mean, this is a very... toothsome... (laughs) - Right.

- ...poem with all sorts of flavors in it.

It's like because I'm so obsessed with all the senses.

And I think that comes from my Spanish side, too.

And it was the way I experienced life in Spanish and culturally and linguistically.

With gusto.

(laughs) - With gusto.

The foods that stand out for me are, obviously, the Cuban bread.

We had Cuban bread for everything.

A Cuban breakfast will be Cuban bread, sliced down the middle.

ESTEFAN: You literally dip the buttered Cuban bread that we would cut in long strips like this and dip it in the café con leche.

Back in the day, we had electrical portable stoves and I remember we used to travel with one of those.

They would take their food with them and we would cook our own things.

"My brother and I should still be pretending "we don't know our parents, embarrassing us as they roll the luggage cart past the front desk."

It's really embarrassing for him.

Two dozen loaves of Cuban bread, like who does that, you know?

CJ BOUTTE: I don't think it's just the suitcases that embarrassed him.

I guess it might have been the fact that he had a ton of mangos in the bag that would last him a week or the bread.

Things are always imprinting us as kids, and then we're like at the moment, part of our conscious brain is like, "Gross, how embarrassing, how dare you."

Imagine, like in the poem, she's bringing Cuban bread and her, and her crockpot, you know, basically through a lobby.

ESTEFAN: Of course it was reeking of garlic because it had to come already marinated.

Then, what's left over, you'd chop it up and make it into pan con lechon, which is why they have the 12 loaves of Cuban bread.

NEW: I noticed our espresso pot, the pressure cooker, as if this is the essential equipment that makes the household run.

Well, you can't make beans without a pressure cooker.

My mom always takes the pot she says that cooks the rice the best, she always takes that one pot.

And I remember one day we got on an airplane and the pot dropped out and she... it was so embarrassing.

And I'm like, "Ma, I think every pot still makes the same thing."

She was like, "No, no, no, no, only this one."

The bottom line is that we can't afford to not eat Cuban food.

"All because we can't afford to eat out, "not even on vacation, "only two hours from our home in Miami, "but far enough away to be thrilled by the whiter sands "on the west coast of Florida, "where I should still be for the first time watching the sun set instead of rise over the ocean."

♪ ♪ We live our lives in physical reality, right, in physical space.

I've been really thinking about this emotional landscape and physical landscape, and our sense of place, I think, is derived from a complex intersection of those two things.

ESTEFAN: I still remember driving into Florida and first stopping at this juice stand that would sell you the juice in these little orange plastic things with the green lid and the little straw and immediately feeling different, feeling the humidity, feeling the sensuality.

CARLOS ALVAREZ: It was very important to spend time with your family, so we would put our pennies into this vacation.

I feel the feeling like it's speaking about me when I was a child, when we used to go on vacation.

BLANCO: One of the greatest compliments for me as a poet that you could give me is, "That poem reminded me of..." So I know they've internalized it in a way that the poem did something beyond itself.

This poem particularly has that... what I call the mirror effect.

I'm standing in front of it trying to see my reflection and they're trying to make out my life.

But it's also the reader standing right next to me and their life starts appearing.

♪ ♪ Whether it be the Varadero, if you were in Havana, or whether it be in Marco Island or the Keys, like I did from Miami, it's very similar.

It's very close to home, but it feels like a whole new place.

♪ ♪ BLANCO: Even though it was basically a poor man's vacation, almost a staycation, but the excitement of just driving two hours through the Everglades, it was just the sense of a portal, of going somewhere else.

♪ ♪ MORENO: I can picture it, there's probably a really cool neon sign outside with arrows going to it.

There was probably some palms in the Gulf Motel logo, maybe a dolphin, you know, the colors that pop, those oranges, those teals, you could see it.

BLANCO: And then the beaches on the other side of the Oasis, the whiter sands.

ALVAREZ: The water's clearer, there's more wildlife in the ocean.

You see sand dollars, little fish in the sea.

♪ ♪ At the end of the day, you have the sunset.

BLANCO: I had never seen a sun set over the ocean, so for a little kid, that's just, like, insanely wonderful, right?

ALVAREZ: It's a beautiful thing to see the sunset and it becomes a family event.

♪ ♪ BLANCO: "There should be nothing here I don't remember... ♪ ♪ "My mother should still be in the kitchenette "of the Gulf Motel, her daisy sandals from Kmart "squeaking across the linoleum, "still gorgeous in her teal swimsuit and amber earrings "stirring a pot of arroz-con-pollo, "adding sprinkles of onion powder and dollops of tomato sauce."

GENESIS BERRY: I also liked how he was describing his mother always making arroz con pollo in the kitchenette.

I know she'd be putting that adobo and la sazón.

AMERICA FUENTES: Garlic and onions and all this... rice and pollo.

MORENO: I remember going to my grandma's house and she always wanted to feed me first thing, walk in through the door, it's like, "Oh, we have arroz con pollo here "that's been in the fridge for, like, three days.

But it tastes better now than it did when we first made it."

When my mom be cooking, she be having the loud music up loud and stirring the rice.

♪ ♪ NEW: The storytelling of this poem is so inviting, that one might not notice at first how Blanco builds the poem out of quite complex multi-sensory images.

BLANCO: This poem is constructed out of sensory details.

Everything that is an abstract thought in our minds, every single thing, at some point only makes it appear through a sensory experience.

MORENO: You can see it, you can hear it, and you can smell it.

NEW: The Gulf Motel itself rises out of the sugar-fine sand like a pastel-frosted cake and a castle, as the poet summons multiple images sweetened by a child's fancy.

♪ ♪ Those suitcases have the sound of scuffing in them.

Even as the word "scruffy" literally refers to a rough and dirty visual appearance.

When a poet uses imagery and sound to fuse various senses, we call it synesthesia.

And that's what we hear in the hard "P"s, "G"s, and "K"s of the pork roast reeking garlic and of the mangos crackling in their paper bags.

Those "P"s, "G"s, and "K"s somehow convey pungent odor, as well as noise that cuts through the smooth hush of the marble lobby.

BLANCO: "Adding sprinkles of onion powder and dollops of tomato sauce."

Dollops is not just an image, it's a sensory detail, because you're hearing that.

NEW: In her vivid swimsuit, stirring the family's dinner, Richard's mother is the poem's muse whose beauty lights up the humble kitchenette.

FUENTES: She's gorgeous, she's... she's, she's cooking for her children.

She's in this beautiful, this beautiful scene.

You know, he sees his mother as this... this gorgeous larger-than-life figure.

But I think what he's remembering is the best of his parents.

He's remembering the golden age of his growing up.

♪ ♪ NEW: Blanco's portrait of his mother is universal, but also, for those in the know, very Cuban.

She's gorgeous.

Style in Cuban women was above and beyond anything.

They did their hair, they put on makeup.

My mother would never leave the house in... rollers in her hair, would vacuum the floor in heels.

There was a shop in Cuba called El Encanto, "The Enchantment," and the minute that things came out in Paris, fashion-wise, they were in that Cuban store.

FUENTES: It doesn't have to do with money.

When you have it, you have it.

ESTEFAN: They still found a way to look impeccable and and put together.

♪ ♪ BLANCO: "My father should still be in a terrycloth jacket "smoking, clinking a glass of amber whiskey in the sunset at the Gulf Motel."

ESTEFAN: My father had that jacket.

It was kind of like a tan color with, they had a couple stripes going right down in different terry.

It was like a towel jacket they used to wear.

There's still some.

ESTEFAN: The men were dressed in a jacket.

It was a terrycloth because you jump in the pool, you come out, and you wear the jacket.

My father would sit with his highball glass smoking in the terrycloth jacket.

MORENO: I still see the cool guys ordering the cool whiskey and... with that big ice cube inside.

I still remember the smell of my father's skin that was Old Spice and cigarette.

Everything is alive for me in this poem.

NEW: Blanco's portrait of his father, conveyed in just a few details, is particular.

And yet the father on the balcony is also everyone's father.

"My father should still be in a terrycloth jacket, smoking."

"And clinking a glass of amber whiskey."

"In the sunset at the Gulf Motel, "watching us dive into the pool, "two boys he'll never see grow into men who will be proud of him."

♪ ♪ BOUTTE: You can kind of tell that his father might have passed, so I guess he wants to hold on to that, just to have the memory, just remember all the good times that happened with him.

My girlfriend cried at this part when... he's saying about his father, that he's, that he's proud... and also that he would never see the kids grow up.

This whole macho persona, the father figure, it is a very Latin, sexy, Cuban thing, and then comes the tragedy of losing the father.

I haven't seen my father since I was three.

I left Cuba, he stayed behind.

They wouldn't let him get out.

♪ ♪ (seagull cawing) BLANCO: "There should be nothing here "I don't remember... "My brother and I should still be playing Parcheesi, "my father should still be alive, "slow dancing with my mother "on the sliding glass balcony of the Gulf Motel.

"No music, only the waves keeping time, "a song only their minds hear "ten-thousand nights back to their life in Cuba.

"My mother's face should still be resting against "his bare chest, like the moon resting "on the sea, the stars should still be turning around them.

♪ ♪ FUENTES: There is nothing more beautiful than when he is talking about the dance and the way she puts her head on his chest.

There's nothing more gorgeous, I think, for a son to look at his parents and see love and see unity.

To see a face on a bare chest, that's very sensual.

VLADIMIR CORTEZ: He's probably wants known that every kid... to show that their parents not only love them, but they love each other.

He's probably learning what it's like to be an adult because, like, it's different.

It's very different.

Like, he was there, eight years old, and he just sees his, you know, mom and dad dancing.

It's romantic.

So romantic.

He glamorizes his parents' love.

His parents in this poem are bringing to life their Cuba.

♪ ♪ Because in their Cuba, they would be dancing to romantic music by the ocean.

"A song only their minds hear.

Ten-thousand nights back to their life in Cuba."

That image makes me a little sad, because I know that they're thinking about what they lost.

NEW: The line "ten-thousand nights back to their life in Cuba" drapes the parents' past in romance, but what drove people like Richard's parents from Cuba was a revolution which some scarcely escaped with their lives.

What was happening in Cuba when your parents left?

BLANCO: They left in '67, actually, so they kind of spent almost a full ten years in the revolution.

It wasn't like 1958, dawn of the revolution, the people that had to leave Cuba because their lives were at stake.

My parents came to Miami in 1958.

Each of them came separately when they were 11 years old.

ESTEFAN: When the Cubans left Cuba, it's not as if everybody ran out and bought Louis Vuitton seven-piece set of luggage.

You had to grab what they let you have.

When my mother and I left, we were allowed one suitcase.

That was it.

They had old, raggedy suitcases.

They didn't really have much money.

ESTEFAN: You needed to put that one suitcase everything you could fit.

So you either borrowed from other people, or bought a quick one if you could.

But a lot of people couldn't afford that either.

ALVAREZ: When they left Cuba, they left with nothing.

When we first moved out, we were living in uncles' and my aunts' houses, you know, they would lend us rooms.

I think of what our parents went through, I think to myself, if I had just built this whole world here in Miami and someone came in and I had to leave to a country where... that I don't speak the language and my credentials are no longer relevant, and you're a second-class citizen, and you're at the bottom of the totem pole, you start realizing how difficult it must have been.

♪ ♪ BLANCO: "There should be nothing here I don't remember..." ♪ ♪ "My brother should still be thirteen, sneaking rum "in the bathroom, sculpting naked women from sand.

"I should still be eight years old dazzled by seashells "and how many seconds I can hold my breath underwater-- but I'm not."

♪ ♪ ABREU: "And my brother should still be 13, "sneaking rum in the bathroom, sculpting naked women from sand."

He put humor in it, "sculpting naked women from sand."

ABREU: "I should still be eight years old, "dazzled by seashells and how many seconds I hold my breath underwater."

(water bubbling) BLANCO: There's different things that can happen.

Sometimes the space doesn't change, but you change.

When I go back to, like, grade school and, like, I didn't know the water fountains were that small, right?

- (laughing): Yeah.

That kind of, like... and the place looks exactly the same, but you are obviously a different person.

Sometimes you don't change or your memories don't change, but the physical place changes and so there is nowhere to connect it and then our sense of place is really, abruptly, sort of distorted.

And it's like, did this even happen?

Did I even live here?

Did I even experience this?

Imagine if that was you and you just remember all those flashbacks.

So he's pretty much putting all those flashbacks into a poem.

NEW: Richard uses a poetic device parallel to the flashback, to register this dissonance between past and present: the refrain.

And when I asked him about that refrain, he told me how he'd thrown away the whole first draft of his poem, keeping only the line, "There should be nothing here I don't remember..." I did a first draft of this poem that was just a really angry poem and I was just like, it was, I was just spewing and I was like, how dare they?

And I'm like, blah, blah, blah... How dare who?

How dare whoever changed Marco Island, right.

And then I just let it go for two or three months.

I had to give myself distance from it.

"There should be nothing here I don't remember..." It was the only line I felt was worth saving.

And I literally took that line, threw out the rest of the poem, and started this poem again.

So every time the refrain comes around, it deepens an understanding or adds a dimension to what that means.

And that first line for me is like, oh, there should be nothing here I don't remember.

Then you get these images which are very childlike, you know, the cake decoration, and then you zoom in on the mother, and so there's like, "Hmm, this is not just about loaves of bread anymore."

And then by the end you're like, whoa... the father dies.

Suddenly, "There should be nothing here I don't remember" takes on a whole different gravitas.

And by the time I read it the fourth time, I'm angry.

♪ ♪ "I am thirty-eight, driving up Collier Boulevard, "looking for the Gulf Motel, for everything "that should still be, but isn't.

"I want to blame the condos, "their shadows for ruining the beach and my past, "I want to chase the snowbirds away "with their tacky mansions and yachts, I want to turn to the golf courses back into mangroves."

ESTEFAN: We often do that, we go back to places.

For example, we have a home in Vero Beach.

The reason that I was so drawn to it is because it still reminds me of Miami when I was a kid.

BLANCO: Our memories don't change, therefore these places are not supposed to change.

This is the first time in my life where I went back to a place and said, wait a minute, this has nothing to do with being Cuban and everything to do with being Cuban.

And I realized that Marco Island, this place, this Gulf Motel, in some ways became the equivalent of my Cuba, my own lost place.

♪ ♪ Everybody, as I say, has their own Gulf Motel.

This reminded me of when I went over this place, that place, or not necessarily a motel, it might have been an aunt's house.

Whether that's a vacation spot or just a grandma's kitchen table, there's some place fixed in time in their mind.

Everybody has a Gulf Motel.

♪ ♪ "I want to find The Gulf Motel "exactly as it was "and pretend for a moment, nothing lost is lost."

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪