Through cold New England January's air
I saw him (Frost) squint,
iconic
from across the East Portico,
culturally symbolic
on a platform above me (I was twenty-eight).
Years later I knew the paper
he held hard to read,
his hotel's old typewriter
running low on ink
the night before.
The illegible poem a preface
to the one Kennedy requested -
the one he'd read years before (ca. 1942)
in the Virginia Quarterly Review,
eyes watering.
Frost stood there, faltering
in the new-fallen snow's reflective light,
half-blinded,
and I was twenty-eight as I thought,
"Kennedy:
cultured man,
sycophant, or...?"
Jul 21, 2013
Jul 21, 2013 at 3:49 AM UTC
Through cold New England January's air
I saw him (Frost) squint,
iconic
from across the East Portico,
culturally symbolic
on a platform above me (I was twenty-eight).
Years later I knew the paper
he held hard to read,
his hotel's old typewriter
running low on ink
the night before.
The illegible poem a preface
to the one Kennedy requested -
the one he'd read years before (ca. 1942)
in the Virginia Quarterly Review,
eyes watering.
Frost stood there, faltering
in the new-fallen snow's reflective light,
half-blinded,
and I was twenty-eight as I thought,
"Kennedy:
cultured man,
sycophant, or...?"
"When Robert Frost became the first poet to read in the program of a presidential inauguration in 1961, he was already well regarded in the capital: he read and dined at the White House; the Attorney General assisted his successful campaign to release Ezra Pound, who was under indictment for treason, from St. Elizabeth's Hospital; he was offered the Consultant in Poetry position by the Library of Congress; and the United States Senate passed a resolution naming Frost 'America's great poet-philosopher.' In the words of the poet William Meredith, the decision to include Frost in the inauguration 'focused attention on Kennedy as a man of culture, as a man interested in culture.' Kennedy's decision to include Frost, however, was more likely a personal gesture to the poet, who was responsible for much of the momentum early in the President's campaign."
^The full article is here: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20540
Full Film of Kennedy's Inaugural Ceremony:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdG1kcEAsX0
"still unstoried, artless, unenhanced" is most of the second-to-last line of the poem he ended up reciting at Kennedy's inauguration, "The Gift Outright".
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