Robert Frost: Difference between revisions

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Upon his death in Boston on [[January 29]], [[1963]], Robert Frost was buried in the Old Bennington Cemetery, in [[Bennington (town), Vermont|Bennington, Vermont]]. Harvard's 1965 alumni directory indicates his having received an honorary degree there; Frost also received honorary degrees from [[Bates College]], [[University of Oxford|Oxford]] and [[University of Cambridge|Cambridge]] universities, and he was the first to receive two honorary degrees from Dartmouth College. During his lifetime, the Robert Frost Middle School in [[Fairfax, Virginia]] as well as the main library of Amherst College were named after him.

===Kennedy Inauguration Poems===

Though not notably associated with any political party, Frost is widely remembered for reciting a poem, "The Gift Outright", on January 20, 1961 at the inauguration of President [[John F. Kennedy]]. Nominally a tribute to the country's early Colonial spirit ("This land was ours before we were the land's"), the poem ends on an optimistic, but characteristically ambivalent, note:

:''Such as we were we gave ourselves outright''

:''(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)''

:''To the land vaguely realizing westward,''

:''But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,''

:''Such as she was, such as she would become.''

Frost had intended to read another poem, "Dedication", which he had written specifically for Kennedy and for the occasion. But with feeble eyesight, an unfamiliarity with the new poem, and difficulty reading his typescript in the sheer January light, Frost chose only to deliver the poem he knew from memory (which he did in strong voice, despite his 86 years).

In April 2006, a handwritten copy of "Dedication" was donated to the [[John F. Kennedy Library]] in [[Boston, Massachusetts]]; it had come from the estate of one of Kennedy's special assistants (who died the year before). On the manuscript, Frost had added "To John F. Kennedy, At his inauguration to be president of this country. January 20th, 1961. With the Heart of the World," followed by, "Amended copy, now let's mend our ways." After removing the paper backing from the frame, a Kennedy archivist discovered a faintly-legible handwritten note from [[Jackie Kennedy|Jacqueline Kennedy]]: "For Jack, January 23, 1961. First thing I had framed to put in your office. First thing to be hung there."[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/21/AR2006042101378.html?nav=rss_artsandliving/entertainmentnews]

:''... The glory of a next Augustan age''

:''Of a power leading from its strength and pride,''

:''Of young ambition eager to be tried,''

:''Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,''

:''In any game the nations want to play.''

:''A golden age of poetry and power''

:''Of which this noonday's the beginning hour.''[http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mcc&fileName=088/page.db&recNum=0&itemLink=r?ammem/mcc:@field(DOCID+@lit(mcc/088))]

Frost represented the United States on several official missions, including a meeting with Soviet leader [[Nikita Khrushchev]]. After the latter meeting "he told a press conference in New York on September 9 [1962] that Krushchev 'thought Americans were too liberal to fight," a remark which so angered Kennedy<ref>Dalleck, Robert, John F. ''Kennedy: An Unfinished Life 1917-1963'' (2003; London: Penguin, 2004), 540.</ref> that he severed the hitherto cordial relations between himself and Frost, refusing so determinatively to speak to him again that he declined both Stewart Udall's request in January 1963 that he send the dying Frost a final message<ref>Reeves, Richard, ''President Kennedy: Profile of Power'' (1993; London: Papermac, 1994), 455.</ref> and ignored "pleas from the eighty-eight year old poet's deathbed."<ref>Reeves, Richard, op. cit., plate 23.</ref>

==Works==