Eleven readers from the fields of arts and politics selected works from their favorite American poets to read at the 2nd Annual “Poetry and the Creative Mind” evening to a packed house at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. The event celebrated National Poetry Month (April), initiated in 1996 by the American Academy of Poetry, which the event benefitted, and was dedicated to the late George Plimpton, founder of The Paris Review and “a great friend of poetry,” said Academy Executive Director Tree Swenson.
Straying into the political realm at the outset, co-chair Rose Styron mentioned the war in Iraq and our imperiled freedom of information. Then Senator Edward Kennedy read Robert Frost’s “The Gift Outright,” recited by the then-87-year-old poet at the cold and blustery inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, January 20, 1961. Kennedy also read an excerpt from the Civil War epic “John Brown’s Body,” by Stephen Vincent Benet, followed by the sentimental choice of “Meanwhile in Massachusetts,” a poem written by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis for JFK on their first wedding anniversary, and inspired by Benet’s poem.
Reflecting the perilous times we live in, Samantha Power read “Bosnia Tune,” by Joseph Brodsky, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. And Meryl Streep changed her selections “in the spirit of civil disobedience,” reading “Next Day,” contemplations of mortality and materialism, by Randall Jarrell, and “One in a Thousand of Years of the Nights,” by Delmore Schwartz (instead of a T.S. Eliot poem).
Wynton Marsalis touched the souls of the audi-ence with his sermon-like reading of “The Creation,” by James Weldon Johnson, then created his own jazz poetry with his horn, followed by a rhythmic reading (accompanied by audience clapping) of “John Henry.” Cynthia Rowley read two Gwendolyn Brooks’ poems (which inspired her design of the “We cool” T-shirt for the Academy). Mary-Louise Parker (who asked audience members to close their eyes), read poems by Anne Sexton and W.H. Auden. She was followed by first-time poetry reader Kevin Kline (who asked listeners to open their eyes and cover their ears); he read a witty collection of poems by Marianne Moore, John Berryman, and Howard Nemerov. Diane Sawyer read Sondheim lyrics, Louis Menand read Gertrude Stein, and Brice Marden read works by Charles Reznikoff, Theodore Roethke, and Kenneth Rexroth. Vanessa Redgrave concluded with a tribute to American arts and democracy: selections from Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Allen Ginsberg.
Evening co-chair Jorie Graham adjourned the gathering with a challenge to future poets. “Poetry continually cleanses the language,” she said. “For every lie we’re told by advertisers and politicians, we need one poem to balance it.”
When the national mood is dark, poetry can lift the spirit and make the heart sing.
