The HyperTexts
JFK and Poetry
by Michael R. Burch
Was John Fitzgerald Kennedy a poet? He certainly was an accomplished writer.
During his recovery from back surgery, he wrote Profiles in Courage, which
won a Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1957. And he definately had a way with words ...
When power leads man toward 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.
—John Fitzgerald Kennedy
JFK made the quite poetic comment above as he helped inaugurate the
Robert Frost Library at Amherst College by speaking at the laying of its
cornerstone on October 26, 1963. In a way he was returning
a favor, as Frost had become the first American poet to recite a poem at a
presidential inauguration when JFK was sworn in on January 20, 1961. Before JFK
announced his campaign, Frost had publicly prophesied that his young
neighbor (they were both natives of Massachusetts) would be the next president.
During his campaign Kennedy often quoted the closing lines of Frost's poem
"Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" at the end of his speeches: "But I have
promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep." And because JFK spoke positively, even glowingly, about poetry on a
number of occasions, he certainly seems to have been a fan of the fairest Muse
...
"Don't teach my boy poetry,"
an English mother recently
wrote
the Provost of Harrow.
"Don't teach my boy poetry;
he's going to stand for
Parliament."
Well, perhaps she was right—
but if more politicians knew poetry,
and more poets knew politics,
I am convinced the world
would be a little better place to
live.
—John Fitzgerald Kennedy
I excerpted the poem above from a speech JFK gave at Harvard in 1956. And even if he
wasn't actually a poet himself, still he was a pretty good poetry critic ...
• We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of
truth.
• Art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of
our judgment.
• I look forward to an America which will reward
achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft.
•
The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last
champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and
an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure.
• The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the
life of a nation, is very close to the center of a nation's purpose...and is a
test of the quality of a nation's civilization.
• Too often in the past, we have thought of the artist as an idler and
dilettante and of the lover of arts as somehow sissy and effete. We have done
both an injustice. The life of the artist is, in relation to his work, stern and
lonely. He has labored hard, often amid deprivation, to perfect his skill. He
has turned aside from quick success in order to strip his vision of everything
secondary or cheapening. His working life is marked by intense application and
intense discipline.
• There is a connection, hard to explain logically
but easy to feel, between achievement in public life and progress in the arts.
The age of Pericles was also the age of Phidias. The age of Lorenzo de Medici
was also the age of Leonardo da Vinci. The age Elizabeth also the age of
Shakespeare. And the New Frontier for which I campaign in public life, can also
be a New Frontier for American art.
Leonard Bernstein said this about JFK and love and patronage of the arts:
"American artists have for three years looked to the White House with
unaccustomed confidence and warmth. We loved him for the honor in which he held
art, in which he held every creative impulse of the human mind, whether it was
expressed in words, or notes, or paints, or mathematical symbols." And like many
artists, JFK was simultaneously a realist and an optimist. He accepted the world as it is,
with all its blemishes, but he never gave up the hope that progress should be
made, can be made, and will be made ...
Westward, look, the land is bright,
however dark it looks now.
—John Fitzgerald Kennedy
JFK quoted the first line above from Arthur Hugh Clough's poem "Say Not the
Struggle Naught Availeth" at his last press conference on November 14, 1963. In
his last speech, planned for the Dallas luncheon to which his motorcade was
heading when he was shot and killed, he had planned to say:
There will always be dissident voices heard in the land,
expressing opposition without alternatives,
finding fault but never favor,
perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility.
But today, other voices are heard in the land.
—John Fitzgerald Kennedy
The repetition of "voices heard in the land" reminds me of poetry in the Hebrew
Bible. And JFK himself certainly inspired poetry: for instance this elegy by the
columnist Mary McGrory: "That lightsome tread, that debonair touch, that shock
of chestnut hair, that beguiling grin, that shattering understatement—these are
what we shall remember."
Sometimes in his speeches JFK sounded remarkably like Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr., another charismatic speaker who was able to wax poetic ...
I look forward to a great future for America,
a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral
restraint,
its wealth with our wisdom,
its power with our purpose.
I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty,
which will protect the beauty of our natural environment,
which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our
national past,
and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future.
—John Fitzgerald Kennedy
In a stirring speech televised on June 11, 1963, JFK went far beyond any
previous American president by committing the United States to laws and courts
that were colorblind, declaring this to be a moral imperative in ringing tones
like those of MLK: "We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old
as the Scriptures and as clear as the American Constitution."
Whether his Camelot was real, or mythic, or a bit of both, there is no doubt
about the reality that Kennedy's picture hung alongside that of Dr. King in many
American houses. And rightfully so. Two men who were so very different in so
many ways, were remarkably similar in their belief that both God and the
American Constitution agreed that the proper path for Americans to travel,
together, was the path of social justice. And that idea had been expressed
thousands of years before, in the Hebrew poetry of the Bible.
Because of what one writer called Kennedy’s "legacy of hope," he has become a
charismatic icon of progress and possibilities. More than four million people
visit his grave every year.
Was he perfect? Who is. But he was willing to stand up to what William Blake
called the "Satanic Mills" and what Dwight D. Eisenhower later called the
"military-industrial complex." After the disastrous Bay of Pigs botched
invasion of Cuba, he was willing to stand up to his own generals, refusing to be the one
to press the nuclear trigger first during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And at his last press conference, he seemed
to still be committed to bringing American troops home from Vietnam, although he
wouldn't specify an exact number, saying that decision would be made after a
meeting to be held on November 20, 1963, two days before his assassination. If
he had lived, it seems quite possible that the Vietnam War would not have
continued to escalate, or at least not due to massive buildups of American
troops.
Here are excerpts from Dr. James K. Galbraith's article "JFK’s Vietnam Withdrawal Plan Is a
Fact, Not Speculation" which appeared in The Nation on November 22,
2013:
My essays in Boston Review and Salon established that the plan
to withdraw US forces from Vietnam by the end of 1965 existed. And that
President Kennedy had decided to implement that plan. In 2003, this was
controversial. Many historians had denied it. Peter Dale Scott, John Newman, and
Arthur Schlesinger were exceptions. They were right, and documents and tapes
released under the JFK Records Act proved them right. The issue was resolved by
early 2008 when Francis Bator, who had been President Johnson's Deputy National
Security Adviser, opened his reply to my letter in the New York Review of
Books with these words:
Professor Galbraith is correct [Letters, NYR, December 6, 2007] that
"there was
a plan to withdraw US forces from Vietnam, beginning with the first thousand by
December 1963, and almost all of the rest by the end of 1965. … President
Kennedy had approved that plan. It was the actual policy of the United States on
the day Kennedy died.
Here is Robert McNamara's summary of the October 2, 1963 meeting, my comment,
and his description of the outcome:
RN: One faction believed military progress had
been good and training had progressed to the point where we could begin to
withdraw. A second faction did not see the war as progressing well and did not
see the South Vietnamese showing evidence of successful training. But they, too,
agreed that we should begin to withdraw. ... The third faction, representing the
majority, considered the South Vietnamese trainable but believed our training
had not been in place long enough to achieve results and, therefore, should
continue at current levels.
JG: As McNamara’s 1986 oral history, on deposit at the Lyndon Baines
Johnson Library, makes clear (but his book does not), he was himself in the
second group, who favored withdrawal without victory—not necessarily
admitting or even predicting defeat, but accepting uncertainty as to what
would follow. The denouement came shortly thereafter:
RN: After much debate, the president endorsed our recommendation to withdraw 1,000 men by
December 31, 1963. He did so, I recall, without indicating his reasoning. In any
event, because objections had been so intense and because I suspected others
might try to get him to reverse the decision, I urged him to announce it
publicly. That would set it in concrete. ... The president finally agreed, and
the announcement was released by Pierre Salinger after the meeting. After much
debate, the president endorsed our recommendation to withdraw 1,000 men by
December 31, 1963. He did so, I recall, without indicating his reasoning. In any
event, because objections had been so intense and because I suspected others
might try to get him to reverse the decision, I urged him to announce it
publicly. That would set it in concrete. ... The president finally agreed, and
the announcement was released by Pierre Salinger after the meeting.
On the day Kennedy died, the course of policy had been set. This is not speculation about a state of
mind. It is a statement of fact about a decision. Had Kennedy lived, the
withdrawal plan would have remained policy, and the numbers of US troops in
Vietnam would have declined, unless and until policy changed. Might Kennedy
still have "reversed the decision" at some point? Of course he might have. But
there is no evidence that he intended to do so.
John F. Kennedy's Accomplishments, Major Life Events and Influence
1917: He was born in Brookline, Massachusetts.
1940: He graduated cum laude from Harvard University.
1940: His college thesis "Appeasement in Munich" was later published as a book titled
Why England Slept.
1941: He was sworn into the U.S. Navy as an ensign, shortly before the Pearl Harbor attack.
1943: He was made a lieutenant and given command of PT-109.
1944: He was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal and Purple Heart for rescuing his crew when PT-109 sank.
1945: He was honorably discharged from the Navy with the rank of full lieutenant.
1946: He was elected U.S. Representative for the 11th Congressional District in Boston at age 29.
1948: He was re-elected.
1950: He was re-elected.
1952: He was elected U.S. Senator for Massachusetts.
1953: He married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier.
1955: During recovery from a second back operation, he wrote Profiles in Courage.
1957: His daughter Caroline Bouvier Kennedy was born.
1957: Profiles in Courage won a Pulitzer Prize for biography.
1958: He was re-elected U.S. Senator.
1960: His son John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. was born.
1960: He and his brother Robert intervened to help free Martin Luther King Jr. from prison.
1961: He became the youngest president at age 43, and the first Catholic president.
1961: The African-American contralto Marian Anderson sang at his inauguration and Robert Frost recited a poem.
1961: He signed a bill creating the Peace Corps.
1961: His brother Robert, the U.S. Attorney General, sent 400 federal marshals to protect Freedom Riders from racist mobs.
1961: The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba failed, for which he was heavily criticized.
1961: He launched the "space race," correctly predicting that the U.S. would reach the moon before the decade ended.
1962: He handled the Cuban Missile Crisis admirably, and Russia withdrew its missiles.
1962: He federalized the Mississippi National Guard to allow an African-American to enroll at the University of Mississippi.
1963: He federalized the Alabama National Guard to protect two African-American students at the University of Alabama.
1963: He announced major civil rights legislation to be submitted to Congress.
1963: He gave his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.
1963: He signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the USSR and Great Britain.
1963: On NOV. 22, 1963, he was shot while riding in an open-top limousine through downtown Dallas and died the same day.
1963: On NOV. 25, 1963, he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
1964: The Civil Rights Act, based on Kennedy's stated vision of racial equality, passes Congress.
1965: The National Endowment for the Arts was established under President Johnson, thanks to the Kennedy legacy.
President John F. Kennedy: Remarks at Amherst College, October 26, 1963
The following is an excerpt from a speech given by President John F. Kennedy on
October 26, 1963 at Amherst College in Massachusetts, in honor of the poet
Robert Frost. Frost had died in January of that year. In this speech, President
Kennedy made clear the need for a nation to represent itself not only through
its strength but also through its art and as he said, "full recognition of the
place of the artist." Two years later, President Lyndon Johnson signed the
National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act, creating the National
Endowment for the Arts.
Speech transcript
Our national strength matters, but the spirit which informs and controls our
strength matters just as much. This was the special significance of Robert
Frost. He brought an unsparing instinct for reality to bear on the platitudes
and pieties of society. His sense of the human tragedy fortified him against
self-deception and easy consolation. "I have been" he wrote, "one acquainted
with the night." And because he knew the midnight as well as the high noon,
because he understood the ordeal as well as the triumph of the human spirit, he
gave his age strength with which to overcome despair. At bottom, he held a deep
faith in the spirit of man, 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 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.
The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last
champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and
an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as Frost
said, a lover's quarrel with the world. In pursuing his perceptions of reality,
he must often sail against the currents of his time. This is not a popular role.
If Robert Frost was much honored in his lifetime, it was because a good many
preferred to ignore his darker truths. Yet in retrospect, we see how the
artist's fidelity has strengthened the fiber of our national life.
If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is
because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any
true artist, makes him aware that our Nation falls short of its highest
potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our
civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.
If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free
to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not
a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. And as Mr. MacLeish once remarked
of poets, there is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style. In free
society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and
ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere.
But democratic society--in it, 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. In
serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the
nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost's
hired man, the fate of having "nothing to look backward to with pride, and
nothing to look forward to with hope."
I look forward to a great future for America, a future in which our country will
match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our
wisdom, its power with our purpose. I look forward to an America which will not
be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural
environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and
parks of our national past, and which will build handsome and balanced cities
for our future.
I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we
reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which
will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will
steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens. And I look
forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for
its strength but for its civilization as well. And I look forward to a world
which will be safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal
distinction.
Robert Frost was often skeptical about projects for human improvement, yet I do
not think he would disdain this hope. As he wrote during the uncertain days of
the Second War:
Take human nature altogether since time began . . .
And it must be a little more in favor of man,
Say a fraction of one percent at the very least . . .
Our hold on this planet wouldn't have so increased.
Because of Mr. Frost's life and work, because of the life and work of this
college, our hold on this planet has increased.
Text and recording courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Library and the U.S.
National Archives.
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