Entering into writing a poem is an emotional endeavor for me as well as a spiritual and creative one. Having to write those poems for the inauguration, I started asking deeper questions about my cultural identity, and my connection to America.

As an immigrant, there's a little part of you that always says, "Well, I'm not a hundred percent American." America is some other little boy or some other place I haven't been to yet.

I was at a stage in my life where I felt sort of comfortable being a dislocated person emotionally, feeling in some ways like a man without any particular country. I had come to a nice space with the imaginary Cuba or the imaginary America that I thought existed.

We have always been searching for home. It's in our art... our religion... everything.

Artists are the emotional historians of the world.

Everything is symbolic. If they'd picked some middle-aged white guy, well, that would have been a symbol, but it wouldn't have been shocking because that's the expected norm, right? I felt I was a good match: here's an accomplished poet, and he's also gay and Latino.

Good art and a good life answers questions. Great art and a great life asks questions.