The president and the poet
It had snowed heavily the night before, and the day dawned with a frigid wind and blinding sunlight that glinted off the blanket of white spread out in all directions where the shovelers had left it undisturbed. The area around the speaker’s platform and the stands had been cleared, but the reflected light from surrounding snow cover was intense.
The poet, an old man of 86, approached the podium and began to read from the manuscript he carried. He wore an overcoat and scarf against the cold but was hatless, following the example of the newly inaugurated president who sat in the row behind him looking pleased and confident. The wind tousled he old man’s hair and rustled the paper in his hand. It was inauguration day, January 20, 1961, and President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had invited Robert Frost, America’s foremost poet, to read a poem for the occasion.
I am telling this story now for the April issue of New England Psychologist because April is National Poetry Month and because, especially in our divisive political climate, we could all use a reminder of the role of poetry in giving voice to what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.
And so Frost, struggling against the glare of the sun, began to read his poem entitled Dedication. “Summoning artists to participate / In the august occasions of the state /
Seems something artists ought to celebrate.” In three attempts, he only managed to read three lines. The poet then stopped trying to read this poem that he had just composed the previous night as a surprise for Kennedy and turned to an older one that he and the president had planned for the event. In a stronger voice, Frost recited The Gift Outright from memory. This is a short poem about the founding of our country and our forefathers’ relationship to this new land across the sea that would become our home.
In just 16 lines, Frost told the story and highlighted the challenge of building a nation. “Something we were withholding made us weak / Until we found out that it was ourselves / We were withholding from our land of living.” With that insight, Frost continued, “Such as we were we gave ourselves outright /…To the land vaguely realizing westward, / But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, / Such as she was, such as she would become.” Then the poet added “such as she will become,” explaining that our new president had requested this revision. The crowd erupted in cheers.
Frost was the first poet to recite a poem at a presidential inauguration though several presidents are known to have had favorite poets whom they looked to for inspiration and guidance. Frost was an early supporter of Kennedy, and prior to his 85th gala birthday celebration at the Waldorf Astoria, he told a reporter who had taunted him about the decline of New England that a New Englander, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, would be our next president. The admiration was mutual, and for his part, Kennedy campaigned with these lines from Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: “But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep.”
It was Stewart Udall, Kennedy’s secretary of the interior and a close friend of Robert Frost, who suggested that Kennedy offer the invitation to read, and Frost promptly accepted the honor. The president and the poet became friends, and Kennedy invited Frost to accompany Udall on a visit to the Soviet Union in October of 1962, just as Khrushchev was secretly installing Russian missiles in Cuba.
Frost was determined to meet the premier and talk with him about how the United States and Russia could establish a relationship that included both rivalry and magnanimity. Khrushchev took the opportunity to assess Kennedy’s probable reaction to the missile installation by spending time with the two emissaries who were close to him. Both men got what they were looking for, and Frost’s mission might have been hailed as a resounding success in strengthening the relationship between the U.S. and Russia, but for one fatal mistake.
Tired after an 18-hour plane trip back to New York and still recovering from an illness that had him bedridden for some of his time in Russia, Frost addressed a throng of reporters at the airport where he misrepresented Khrushchev as saying that the U.S. was “too liberal to fight.” Kennedy was stung by Frost’s statement and did not invite him to the White House for a debriefing. The poet and the president, once close friends, never saw or spoke to one another again. Frost’s health declined and he died in Boston on January 30, 1963, two month before his 89th birthday. Kennedy was assassinated 10 months later.
The month before he died, Kennedy spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Robert Frost Library at Amherst College and left us with these words about the relationship between poetry and power. “At bottom,” Kennedy said of Frost, “…he saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself. When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.”
John Kennedy knew the importance of power and how to use it with reason and restraint. He also knew the importance of art and literature in providing a moral compass to show the way. Robert Frost saw these qualities early in the new president. In the poem that the bright sun on fresh snow stopped him from reading at the inauguration, he praised a new age of “…strength and pride, / Of young ambition eager to be tried …, / A golden age of poetry and power / Of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.”
That golden age has come and gone. It will come again but only if we are ready to recognize and embrace it when it does.