More optimism

A follow up to my post from last week about the new optimism expressed by inviting the poet Amanda Gorman to recite a new poem at the inauguration. The post was a reminiscence of my nine-year-old self watching on tv Robert Frost in the bright sun and chill reciting a poem at Kennedy’s inauguration. I wrote, last week,

“Imagine a time when a President would request a poem for his inauguration when a nation would think it apt, when we weren’t afraid to agree upon and celebrate the beauty of words, when erudition was celebrated.”

Dwight Garner from the NY Times’ recent article presented the first three lines of the Frost poem that he didn’t read (because of the weather conditions he recited a poem of his he had committed to memory)

Summoning artists to participate

?In the august occasions of the state

Seems something artists ought to celebrate.

  Yes, artists and we all, ought to celebrate. Later in the article Garner reminds us what Kennedy said about poetry at the Frost Library dedication: 

 “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.”

 The former president believes that Clorox could cleanse our insides, Kennedy believed that “poetry cleanses.”

 We live in a period of disease and despair. Can we take solace in poetry? For me there is a link between poetry and art and all that is enlightening; to paraphrase another great American leader, Mario Cuomo, today we need prose to get us through the travails, but we will only survive if we are led by poetry.