Poet Richard Blanco has been chosen to be President Barack Obama's inaugural poet for the year 2013 joining the likes of noted poets Robert Frost and Maya Angelou.

The 44 year old son of Cuban exiles Richard Blanco says he felt "a spiritual connection" with President Obama right from his early days in politics. Now, the President's inaugural planners announced Wednesday that Blanco has been chosen to be Obama's inaugural president for the year 2013.

"Since the beginning of the campaign, I totally related to his life story and the way he speaks of his family, and of course his multicultural background," Mr. Blanco said in a telephone interview from the rural village of Bethel, Me., where he lives with his partner. "There has always been a spiritual connection in that sense. I feel in some ways that when I'm writing about my family, I'm writing about him."

Blanco now has landed the task of creating an original poem for the president for the President's ceremonial swearing at the Capitol January 21. Friends and people who known Blanco totally agree with the President's choice and says there isn't anyone better to fit the role.

"I think he was chosen because his America is very similar to the president's America," said Liz Balmaseda, who met Mr. Blanco in the mid-1990s when he was just emerging as a poet, and she was working as a columnist for The Miami Herald. "You don't have to be an exile, you don't have to be Latino or gay to get the yearning in Richard's poetry."

Blanco, himself is ecstatic about being given this honor and says that all this brings back memories of the struggles he and his family went through.

"Even though it's been a few weeks since I found out, [I'm] just thinking about my parents and my grandparents and all the struggles they've been through," he told NPR. "Here I am, first-generation Cuban American, and this great honor that has just come to me, and [I'm] just feeling that sense of just incredible gratitude and love."

"At a poetry reading a woman once asked me to share something about myself that no one would know directly from reading my bio or my work," he says on his website. "Somewhat embarrassed, I told the audience about my poetry dance -- a little Michael Jackson-inspired shtick I do around the house in my pajamas when I am high from a good-poem day."