Diversity In 'One Today And I, Too, Sing America'

Tony Barnett

Mrs. Faith

English III Honors

February 21, 2023

Blanco

In “One Today” by Richard Blanco, ”I Hear America Singing” by Walt Whitman, and “I, Too, Sing America” by Langston Hughes, the authors develop the theme that diversity in America brings us together, and helps us persevere through any hardship before us. “One Today” by Richard Blanco is supposed to be a poem about one day in America, along with all the possibilities of what people in America do in one day, “My face, your face, millions of faces in morning's mirrors,/each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:/ pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,/ fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows/ begging our

Blanco develops the idea of unity very early on within this poem, his specific diction choice of “our day” after the almost divisive “my face, your face” shows we each go through the same challenges every morning although being different. The word choice of “crescendoing” also represents we are rising into the challenge of today, which says as Americans we rise to the challenge before us and persevere. This idea of Americans having perseverance and rising to the challenge is further demonstrated by Langston Hughes in “I, Too, Sing America”, where the idea of Americans rising to the challenge is demonstrated through Hughes's perspective of an African American man before the civil rights movement and the optimism and perseverance they must have to succeed, “I, too, sing America./ I am the darker

The unity and connection between us can be broken by nothing or no one, not even the great expanse of space, “We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight/ of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,/ always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon/ like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop/ and every window, of one country—all of us—/facing the stars/ hope—a new constellation/ waiting for us to map it,/ waiting for us to name it—together” (Blanco, Lines 61-69). Blanco specifically uses the wordage of “we”, “our”, and “us” to further build the sense of unity he started at the beginning of the poem. Also, the beginning and end of the poem are set up in a parallel structure. The beginning of the poem starts with the sun rising and the different aspects of the continental USA; The Great Lakes, Smokies, and Rockies. Though at the end of the poem Blanco shifts the narrative, he talks about heading home and the moon covering all the houses, along with the stars in the sky being ours to conquer. This brings his poem to a nice close through the rising of the sun in the beginning and the finale with the moon. This idea of unity and connection between Americans is further demonstrated by Walt Whitman in his poem, “I Hear America Singing”. In the first sentence of his poem, he establishes the idea of unity, “I hear America singing, the