POWER AND POETRY

by William H. Benson

January 21, 2010

     John F. Kennedy and Robert Frost met on the steps of the Capitol on January 20, 1961 at the inauguration of the 35^th President of the United States. Kennedy’s associate, Stewart Udall, had first suggested that Jack should invite the nation’s most distinguished poet, Robert Frost, to speak at the inauguration, but Kennedy, at first, had hesitated. “Oh no. You know that Robert Frost always steals any show he is part of.”

     During the 1960 campaign, Kennedy had ended his speeches by quoting Robert Frost’s memorable lines: “But I have promises to keep; And miles to go before I sleep; And miles to go before I sleep.”

     Both Kennedy and Frost were from Massachusetts: Kennedy from Hyannis Port on the coast, and Frost from Amherst, in the center of the state, where he was poet-in-residence at Amherst College, and that was about all they had in common, for in 1961, Frost was 86 years old, and Kennedy half that at 43. Where Frost was a distinguished poet, the grand old man of American belles letters, Kennedy was the wealthy scion of Joseph Kennedy, Catholic, Irish, a Navy man, and an exceedingly ambitious politician.

     And yet there was something within Kennedy that drew him to Frost. Someone said it was Kennedy’s “insatiable curiosity, his support of the arts in America, and his optimism.” Another said that his decision to include Frost at the inauguration “focused attention on Kennedy as a man of culture, as a man interested in culture.”

     Alice Roosevelt Longworth said: “The Kennedy’s were a fascinating incredible outfit. I had great fun with them, especially Jack. He loved to tease, and he could be very amusing. He also had a real feeling for learning. Both he and Bobby were eager to supplement their education by learning more. They really wanted to know.”

     The day dawned bright and sunny on the heels of a snowstorm just days before, and then after the swearing in, Kennedy spoke.

     “Let the word go forth . . . that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate. . . . The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. . . . And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country!”

     After the applause, Frost approached the podium, but because of the glare from the blinding sun, he discovered he could not read the 77 lines of the poem “Dedication,” that he had written for the occasion. After a few awkward moments, he instead recited the fourteen lines of “The Gift Outright,” a poem he had memorized.

     Frost’s private advice to the new president: “Be more Irish than Harvard. Poetry and power is the formula for another Augustan age. Don’t be afraid of power.” Then in a thank you note back to Frost, Kennedy wrote, “It’s poetry and power all the way!”

     During the last two years of Frost’s life, he continued to circle within the President’s orbit, but then on January 29, 1963, at the age of 88, the poet passed away. Of Frost, Kennedy said, “He has bequeathed his nation a body of imperishable verse from which Americans will forever gain joy and understanding.”

     On Saturday, October 26, 1963, Amherst College conducted a ground-breaking ceremony for the Robert Frost Library and invited the president to give the key address, and in it Kennedy explored the distinctions and resemblances of power and poetry.

     “And it is hardly an accident that Robert Frost coupled poetry and power, for he saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself. When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for art establishes the basic human truths that serve as the touchstones of our judgment.

     “But in a democratic society the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist, is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. I look forward to a great future for America—a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral strength, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose. I look forward to an America, which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft.”

     Lofty words, but well worth pondering today, and they were virtually President Kennedy’s last intellectual thought, for four weeks later on Friday, November 22, 1963, while riding in a Dallas motorcade, an assassin’s bullet ended his life.

SHERLOCK HOLMES AND 2010

by William H. Benson

January 14, 2010

     Robert Downey, Jr. stars in the new Sherlock Holmes movie that Hollywood released this past Christmas season. Because it is an intricately-woven plot with a fair number of turns and twists, movie-goers must listen closely to the characters, an unusual request of most of Hollywood’s productions and made more difficult in this movie because Downey’s words come so fast and soft, almost unintelligible.

     The story includes all of the standard Sherlock Holmes trappings: Holmes himself—peerless and brilliant; Dr. John Watson, who, with Sherlock, lives at 221 A and B Baker Street; Mrs. Hudson, their domestic housekeeper; LaStrade, the inept London police detective; Irene Radler, Holmes’s female counterpart, played by Rachel McAdams; and a mastermind criminal, who, for this story, is named Blackwood. And then there is the gray and dreary nineteenth-century London setting—the Thames River, Big Ben, and horses pulling coaches over cobblestone streets.

     According to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s canon on Sherlock—four novels and fifty-six short stories—the master detective was born in 1854 on January 6, a day I find most appropriate, at the year’s beginning. January derived its name from the Roman god, Janus, two-faced, seeing into the past, but also peering deep into the future, much like Sherlock. In the present Holmes can step into a crime scene, see from the clues what happened in the past, and using detective reasoning and logic determine what he, Watson, and LaStrade must do to trap the perpetrator in the future.

     The new year, 2010, yawns before us, inviting us to live it, and we wonder what it will hold. George Will in Newsweek considered 2009 “A Clunker of a Year.” And, Jon  Meacham, Newsweek’s editor, called for “The Case for an Optimistic Stoicism,” and then quoted from Meditations, written by the second-century A.D. Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius: “If you’ve seen the present then you’ve seen everything—as it’s been since the beginning, as it will be forever. The same substance, the same form. All of it.”

     Our ears long for a healthy dose of optimism, perhaps even a Marcus Aurelius stoic variety. A headline by Daniel Gross, another Newsweek columnist, shouted, “Snap Out of It! The dangers of economic pessimism.”

     Thirty years ago, America was adrift, suffering from galloping inflation, an Iran hostage crisis, a sluggish economy, and a cerebral but ineffective Democratic President, Jimmy Carter. Suddenly, from the wings, we heard a new voice, the California Republican governor Ronald Reagan, who startled everyone with his words, “There are those who think that America’s best days are gone, that we are now a has-been, a finished republic, but I say to you that America’s best days are in the future. We are the city on the hill, a guiding light for all the world to see and admire.” He was right.

     That kind of language uplifted and motivated a downtrodden American people then in 1980 and would do so again in 2010. But instead we read headlines: “How Great Powers Fall: Steep Debt, Slow Growth, and High Spending Kill Empires—and America Could Be Next,” and “An Empire at Risk.” Few words could be more debilitating.

     There are those who argue that the Republican Party must pull itself together, capture the independents and moderates, focus upon fiscal restraint, hold taxes down, finish and be done with these excessively foolish wars in third world countries that squander our people and resources, and then discard unaffordable federal government programs.

     Tim Pawlenty, the Republican governor in Minnesota said, “You can’t say you are going to be fiscally disciplined and then go to Washington and spend like crazy. You can’t say, ‘We are against corruption and bad behavior,’ and then engage in corruption and bad behavior. I mean, people aren’t stupid.” Pawlenty further believes that “we should pass an amendment to require a balanced budget.”

     Haley Barbour, Mississippi’s Republican governor, believes that the Republican Party, instead of struggling for a grand political theory, should take back the moderates. “People are crazy if they think we win by getting more pure. We win by getting big.”

     “Elementary, my dear Watson,” supposedly said Sherlock Holmes, once he had explained how he had solved a crime, but according to Doyle’s canon, Holmes never did say that phrase, for Doyle understood that seeing into the future is not ever elementary.

     And yet the clues are all there for what we face in 2010, and we try to focus upon it and see it, but pessimism and a helpless feeling have obscured and colored the picture gray, like a dreary day in Sherlock Holmes’s London. Let the sun shine on America.