Me & Robert Frost

Statue Dedication in Poets' Garden

Last week I attended the dedication of the new Robert Frost sculpture in the Poets’ Garden, east of the Cornette Library. The garden is just in its development stage and Robert Frost is the first of, what is hoped, are many dedications. Personally I’m pulling for Emily D, myself. The statue was dedicated to Dr. James and Mrs. Mary Cornette, one time President of West Texas A&M University. The sculpture was paid for, in part, by the Jenny Lind Porter foundation which also funds my professorship endowment. Jenny Lind was quite the remarkable teacher, poet, and benefactor and it’s my honor to teach as Porter Professor of English.

At the dedication, I got a chance to share some remembrances of my own about Mr. Frost. Robert Frost was the first poet invited to speak at a Presidential inauguration, that of John F. Kennedy. Frost had written a poem titled  “For John F. Kennedy’s Inauguration” but because of the glare from the sun on that snowy morning, he was unable to see it clearly and instead recited from memory, “The Gift Outright” a poem about America that he’d written perhaps as early as 1934.  As this new addition to the Poets’ Garden was dedicated, it seemed to me that the first stanza of that original poem, written for the inauguration, might be appropriate for this event:

Summoning artists to participate 
In the august occasions of the state 
Seems something artists ought to celebrate. 
Today is for my cause a day of days. 

Continuing on, I recalled my first memory of Robert Frost which was watching him being interviewed by Johnny Carson on Carson’s late-night show. I was of course, but a wee child at the time.  Carson asked him if people ever inquired about the meaning of his poems. Frost said that he had in fact received inquiries from English teachers across the country asking him to explain the poem I read at the dedication, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Before answering Frost would ask, “what do you think it means?” and whatever that person said, Frost would reply, “that’s exactly right.” So across the country, there were hundreds of English teachers who knew the exact meaning of this most famous poem.

If you get a chance, stop by the campus of WTAMU and take a look at this new statuary. You can even read the words on the tablet that Frost is holding as he writes “Stopping by Woods on a Snowing Evening.”

That’s all for me today; I have “miles to go before I sleep.

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