Robert Frost and the Cuban Missile Crisis
Part 1 - Who was Robert Frost
[The following is a transcript to Gerald’s lecture to the Rising Tide Foundation.]
To access the lecture format click here
Robert Frost and the Cuban Missile Crisis
Part 1 - Who was Robert Frost
I wanted to talk about Robert Frost – not about his poetry, but instead about his politics and about the year 1962 – the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. That was 60 years ago, and like 1962, we live in very dangerous times too. What had started as a civil war in eastern Ukraine, is now a military confrontation between Russia and NATO, that threatens us with the danger of nuclear war – a war that most of us won’t survive, and those that do survive, will wish they hadn’t. We have western leaders or ‘managers’, who talk about the limited use of nuclear weapons, and these same managers are opposed to having nuclear power plants in their country, but support having nuclear weapons placed in their country.
Now when I was growing up, I was taught the exact opposite – that we could have the peaceful use of atomic power, like Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program, while we tried to stop the MAD-ness of a nuclear war. So, where have all those peace-lovers gone?
Well, today one of our problems is the arrogance of these ‘managers’ in the west, that we’re not even allowed to question their decisions. Let’s say if you are opposed to Global NATO’s actions, or even if you’re trying not to take sides but somehow want to remain neutral, and only want there to be negotiations for peace, you would still be called a source of ‘enemy disinformation’. And your name might be put on a NATO-Ukrainian black list of the ‘Center for Countering Disinformation’ – like our friend Ray McGovern who spoke to us here at Rising Tide Foundation, a few weeks ago.
Oddly enough, another one of these black lists, is actually a hit list called ‘Myro-tvorets’ that is translated as ‘peacemaker’. I guess it means that any peacemaker gets put on this list. So, we need to rescue this word, peacemaker. Maybe we need to get rid of this myro-tvorets list, and make our own list of real peacemakers, who actually are fighting for world peace. There was a time when, to be a peacemaker, was thought of as something honorable, something to strive for.
So now, I want to talk about one such peacemaker – the poet, Robert Frost. And to start, to just say a few words about who was Robert Frost.
Although Robert Frost is mostly associated with scenes of New England, he was born in San Francisco in 1874, when Ulysses Grant was President. His father, William Frost Jr., was a teacher, who later became the editor of the 4-page San Francisco Evening Bulletin. After his father’s death from tuberculosis when Robert was 11, his family moved back east under the care of his grandfather, William Frost Sr., who ran a mill in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
Robert graduated from Lawrence High School in 1892, where his first published poem was in the high school magazine. After that, he worked at various jobs, but none of which he really liked, because he felt that poetry was his real calling. He sold his first poem, My Butterfly, to the New York Independent magazine in 1894 for $15, and because of this, he felt so confident and secure enough in his future, that he proposed marriage to Elinor White.
A few years later, he attended Harvard from 1897 to 1899 but left due to an illness. Afterwards, he settled and worked on a farm that his grandfather had bought for him and his wife in Derry, New Hampshire, while he worked on his poetry early in the morning, before starting his farm work. After six years, when his life as a farmer proved unsuccessful, he became an English teacher. After six years as a teacher and being discouraged that his poems would not find success in America, in 1912, he and his family moved to Beaconsfield, England, where he was able to have published his first book of poetry ‘A Boy’s Will’ in 1913 (when he was 38), and his second book of poetry ‘North of Boston’ in 1914.
In 1915, Robert returned to the United States, where his first two books of poetry were just being published, and the next year his third book of poetry ‘Mountain Interval’ was published. In 1917 he would become a teacher at Amherst College in Massachusetts, and later at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, before returning to Amherst College. Without having graduated from college, Robert would receive over 40 honorary university degrees, and he would write 6 more books of poetry: ‘New Hampshire’ in 1923, ‘West-Running Brook’ in 1928, ‘A Further Range’ in 1936, ‘A Witness Tree’ in 1942, ‘Steeple Bush’ in 1947, and ‘In the Clearing’ in 1962. He would also write two short dialogues – ‘The Masque of Reason’ in 1945, and ‘The Masque of Mercy’ in 1947.
[In the Bible, the Book of Job has 42 chapters and the Masque of Reason is supposed to be a 43rd and final chapter for the Book of Job. The Masque of Mercy is about the Book of Jonah.]
Every summer, starting in 1921 and for the next 40 years, Robert taught at the Bread Loaf School of English of Middlebury College in Vermont. In 1974 a wonderful book came out, ‘Robert Frost, A Living Voice’ by Reginald Cook, and part 2 of the book is transcriptions of some of these classes.
On January 20th 1961, Robert was asked to speak at the inauguration ceremony for President John F. Kennedy – he was the first poet to speak at an inauguration of a president. He had planned to read a poem that he had written just for this occasion, but he said, he couldn’t read his notes, because of the wind and the sun’s glare. So instead, he recited from memory his poem, ‘The Gift Outright’.
The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
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.
I just want to repeat a few lines, a few thoughts, from that poem: “Such as we were, we gave ourselves outright” to that land of living “Such as she was, such as she would become.”
Doesn’t this remind us of those words from Kennedy’s own inauguration speech that he gave that very same day. “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”, that is, what can I give as a gift ‘outright’, meaning without any ifs, ands, or buts, what can I give as a gift for the common good?
So, when you read Kennedy’s inauguration speech, read Frost’s inauguration poem too, and see the connection.
One year later, on March 26th 1962, on Robert’s 88th birthday, his last book of poetry ‘In the Clearing’, was published, and it contained ‘For John F. Kennedy His Inauguration’ that he had wanted to recite at the inauguration. And that very same day, President John Kennedy bestowed upon Robert Frost the Congressional Gold Medal – “in recognition of his poetry which has enriched the culture of the United States and the philosophy of the world”.
Perhaps by learning more about Robert Frost, we can learn more about the culture of the United States, and the real soul of America, the good and the bad – ‘such as she was, such as she would become’ – what makes America, America – the America in the Gift Outright, of a manifest destiny of giving, not of taking.
[To know more about this correct meaning of Manifest Destiny, you have to read Matt Ehret’s books ‘The Clash of the Two Americas’, especially volume 3 – ‘The Birth of a Eurasian Manifest Destiny’.]
So far, all this sounds like a wonderful life, with a happy ending, but wait, this is right where our story starts – ‘the part where the adventure begins’!
[ next week - part 2 - the Cuban Missile Crisis ]