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Robert Frost’s Disastrous Gaffe in Foreign Policy
Two misspoken sentences destroyed the poet’s relationship with John F. Kennedy
On John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1960, poet Robert Frost was invited to speak and be the first poet to read. According to historian Tim Ott, Kennedy asked Frost, then 85, if could compose a new poem for the ceremony, but Frost refused. Kennedy then asked Frost if he would change a line in the poem he did agree to recite, “The Gift Outright,” to which Frost agreed.
JFK said that he wanted Frost to speak at his inauguration because, as a fellow New Englander, he had “courage, the towering skill and daring.”
However, despite his earlier misgivings, Robert Frost composed a new poem called “Dedication” which was an ode to America. Inspired by the mood of the inauguration, Frost would reference many contemporary events with the line that JFK’s election was:
“The greatest vote a person ever cast,/So close yet sure to be abided by”
Frost would be introduced by the incoming Secretary of the Interior, Stewart L. Udall, and Udall typed up a new copy of “Dedication” as a preamble to read before reading “The Gift Outright”.
The actual reading of the poem, however, went wrong.
