Download CAROLINE KENNEDY SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY A WOMAN`S JOURNEY THROUGH

CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 1
TOM PUTNAM: Good afternoon. I'm Tom Putnam, Director of the John F. Kennedy
Presidential Library and Museum, and on behalf of Tom McNaught, Executive Director of the
Kennedy Library Foundation, and all of my Library and Foundation colleagues, I thank you all
for joining us on this beautiful spring day, the type of day that the poet Rumi may have had in
mind when writing – page 18 of the new book – "Come to the orchard in spring. There is light
and wine and sweethearts in the pomegranate flowers."
Let me begin by acknowledging the generous underwriters of the Kennedy Library Forums,
including lead sponsor Bank of America, Boston Capital, the Lowell Institute, Raytheon, the
Boston Foundation, and our media partners, The Boston Globe, WBUR and NECN.
Our time is short and we want to leave time for all of you to get your book signed, but we're
thrilled to have with us today Caroline Kennedy to introduce her poetry anthology, She Walks in
Beauty: A Woman's Journey Through Poems. We are joined by two of the poets whose work is
featured in the book, Elizabeth Alexander and Naomi Shibab Nye, who I will introduce after
Caroline speaks.
Of the many remarkable documents in this Library, one of my favorites is on the back of page
four of a speech that then-Senator John F. Kennedy gave in Washington State on June 21st,
1959. One senses that he had read the speech and decided it needed a stronger ending, so he
leans over to his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, and scribbles, "Give me the last lines from
'Ulysses'." And he begins to write them for her, "Come my friends," and then you see in her
writing, "Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Sitting well in order, let us smite the sounding
furrow." It goes on for eight lines until the conclusion, "That which we are, we are; one equal
temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find,
and not to yield."
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 2
She has it memorized by heart and quickly jots it down, making a few corrections along the way
for him to use as he sees fit. Then on the last page of the typewritten text, we see JFK's
handwriting with a new conclusion that he has crafted for his address. He writes, "In the poem
'Ulysses,' Tennyson the poet tells us how Ulysses in his old age decides to set out once again on
a last adventure." And then one assumes he reads the final lines to the poem that his wife has
provided to him, though he crosses out the line, "made weak by time and fate," not wanting to
imply that notion to his audience, and inserts, "dealt harshly perhaps by time and fate, but strong
in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
I was saying to Naomi Shibab Nye the fact that he had the audacity to correct Tennyson shows a
certain level of confidence. [Laughter]
The document is a testament to the partnership between John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline
Kennedy, to their own appreciation of poetry and their belief in the power of words, all of which
has been passed on to their daughter. And though we won't put her to the test and see how much
Tennyson she can recite from memory, we are always honored to have her here at the Kennedy
Library. Please join me in welcoming Caroline Kennedy. [Applause]
CAROLINE KENNEDY: Thank you, Tom. That was a wonderful introduction. He hasn't
shared that document with anyone else, but it's interesting that you did bring it up, because my
mother started memorizing poetry with her grandfather. She used to go and see him on
Wednesday afternoons after dancing class, and they would memorize poems together. That was
a poem that she memorized with her grandfather. I've talked about this with my other poetry
anthologies. She always had us collect and give her a poem for a birthday or Mother's Day or
Christmas, and she saved them all in a scrapbook that I have, where she put all the ones that my
brother and I chose. I've continued to do that with my own children.
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 3
"Ulysses" starts it out, and she wrote in the front, "This is a poem that I memorized with my
grandfather." So it's really nice to bring that full circle because she is one of the main inspirations
for this new book that I've put together, called She Walks in Beauty, which is obviously the line
from the famous poem by Lord Byron, who was a favorite of her and my father's because he was
a man of action as well as a man of ideas and a great writer. Actually, my father bought her a
mirror that had once belonged to Lord Byron, so that's one of the reasons why I chose that title
for the book, as well as the fact that I think all of us would like to be described that way, as
walking in beauty. Or we try.
I wanted to welcome all of you today to the Kennedy Library and to tell you how much it means
that you've come. I hope you've had a wonderful day. I've heard about it and I know that a lot of
great ideas and understanding has been exchanged. I'm very happy to launch my book here in
Boston because a love of language and words and ideas was something that my parents shared.
They really believed that America should lead with our spirit, not just our economy or our
military power. On a personal level, they were each shaped by the things that they loved to read.
My father read oratory and history, and my mother poetry and memoir and novels.
For me, it's a special thrill to be here with two of the poets that I most admire and have gotten to
know during the process of writing these books, Elizabeth Alexander and Naomi Shibab Nye. As
we all know, one of my father's most important and symbolic acts was to invite Robert Frost to
read at his Inauguration, which elevated that event and placed it in the continuum of state
ceremonial occasions that goes back to Classical times. We're so lucky to have Elizabeth here,
who read at President Obama's Inauguration, and her wonderful poem "Praise Song for the Day,"
which brings the traditions of Whitman and Frost and others and makes it personal and
contemporary and feminine and maternal in a wonderful way. So it's a great honor to have her
here.
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 4
And I would like to thank my friend, Naomi Shibab Nye, who brings the entire world into her
work. We corresponded when I was putting together Family of Poems for children, and we met
when I visited San Antonio during the 2008 Presidential campaign. Since then, she has come to
the Bronx, where I work at an afterschool program, and spent a day with the kids up there and
has continued to be a great friend and supporter.
When I was working on this book, I was having trouble with a couple of the sections. I couldn't
find poems about friendship, and I couldn't understand why poets didn't seem to have any friends
[laughter], and that everyone else seemed to write and talk and chatter and share and talk about
their friends and their female friends, and women are always talking about their friends, except
there was not one poem that I could find about poets having a friend. And so I said, "Am I
wrong? Or am I missing something out here? Could you help me?" Naomi was incredibly
generous and reached out to her poetic friends and it turns out that there are many, many
wonderful poems about friendship between women and many of them are in this book, and it's
largely thanks to her. So I'm very grateful to you for helping me out.
One of the things she told the students the day she came up was that in a world of words and
language, we can never really feel alone. That struck me because many people think of poetry as
a solitary art form: one poet writing for one reader who's reading somewhere else. But I think
this afternoon and this conversation will show that poetry can really be a way of creating
community. Poems are meant to be heard, and reading poems and sharing them starts a
conversation.
Poetry is the oldest art form and the way generations passed down social ideals and values and
personal truths. That was all done through the spoken word. Today, in our interconnected
world, when the most important things happen between people, I think poetry has a renewed
importance and a renewed role to play.
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 5
Throughout history, women have been the weavers of the world. We are the ones that weave
people together. We weave our experience of life into patterns and our stories into words. Poems
are one of the ways that we do this. They distill our emotions in very few words that we can
carry with us and share as we talk and weave the cloth of our lives.
She Walks in Beauty is the fourth poetry anthology that I've put together, and it grew out of two
sort of related developments in my life. For the past eight years, I've been working in the New
York City public schools and raising my own three children, the youngest of whom is going off
to college this fall. Education has been my focus, both at home and at work; soon the
homeschooling will come to an end.
But amidst all the debate about education today, I don't think that children often hear adults talk
enough about what they're reading and how they're reading it and why it matters. I really have
appreciated how fortunate I am to have grown up in a world of language and ideas, because more
than anything else those are what we need to change the world.
We see it everywhere. There are revolutions of ideas happening around the world, and here at
home we're engaged in deep debates about what kind of society we want to have. It may be true
that if you turn on the TV no one is talking about poetry. But in fact, I think poetry does have a
role to play. It's the essence of language and the purest expression of ideas and emotions.
Poems are short, they're intense, they give us a new way of looking at things. They can bring us
up short and they can remind us of what's really important, and once we know ourselves and
what we believe in, we can use that power to build a better world.
William Carlos Williams said it best in his poem, "Asphodel," in which he wrote, "It's difficult to
get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 6
A few years ago, I turned 50 -- not that many years ago -- and I know it makes people feel really
old when I say that. [Laughter] But you look great. [Laughter] A couple of my friends gave me
poems that seemed to capture this time in my life. One of them is here, one of the people who
started this book off is sitting here today, paying some attention, not all attention. I looked at
them every so often, but I was working on other poetry anthologies for kids at the time.
The first poem was from a woman at the desk next to me, "Poems of Our Climate," by Wallace
Stevens, which contains the line, "the imperfect is our paradise," which resonated deeply with me
as it elevated what I had thought was just compromise and frustration into the essence of being
human.
The second was "Leap Before You Look," by W. H. Auden, which is such an exciting poem and
some people think is a good summary of my foray into politics. [Laughter]
The third was "To Be of Use" by Marge Piercy.
I tried to include these in the kids' anthologies, but they didn't really fit. I accumulated more
poems from friends and family, and then the poems seemed to want a book of their own, so I
went to my editor and I said, "I have this great idea. I want to do a book of poems for middleaged women." She looked at me like I was completely crazy and tried to pretend she wasn't
approaching middle age herself. [Laughter] Then she said, "Okay, see what you can come up
with."
So I tried to round out the picture of a woman's life experience through poems and along the
way, I found poems that evoked memories of my own life as well as poems that enriched my
daily life. The poem that Seamus Heaney wrote about his mother, for example, and the closeness
of the time they spent together when the rest of the family was off at church and he got the
chance to stay home and peel potatoes with her, deepened my own experience of being a mother,
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 7
as well as bringing back the feeling that you have when you're a child sharing a special time with
an older person.
There are poems in the book that my husband read to me, that my children gave me, that my
mother loved, as well as ones that were new to me. There are, of course, many poems about love
and solitude, but I had to look harder than I expected to find poems about modern kinds of work,
other than writing. But most of the poems that had been written, particularly by women poets,
have in the past obviously dealt with more traditional forms of work. So I predict that will be a
growing area, as well as female friendship.
I tried to choose poems that transform ordinary moments into extraordinary ones, poems that
made me laugh as well as those I have returned to often for inspiration. I hope there's something
here for everyone and that people will use this book as a starting point for thinking about the
extraordinary moments in their own lives and the poems that describe those.
So thank you so much, and now we're going to get a treat. [Applause]
TOM PUTNAM: So just a couple of logistical matters before we hear from the two poets. The
book signing will follow immediately. It'll be out in this hallway. The book is on sale in our
museum store, so you need to go to the store first to buy the book before you get in the line.
We're going to take some written questions after we hear from the poets, and my colleague Amy
Macdonald has index cards, so if you'd like to ask a question, just put it on that index card and
she'll bring them up to me.
I can't top the introductions that Caroline did to our two poets, so we'll hear from them in this
order: first Naomi Shibab Nye and then Elizabeth Alexander. [Applause]
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 8
NAOMI SHIBAB NYE: Thank you all for being here. Welcome. Thank you, Caroline, for
those wonderful words, and congratulations. Creating an anthology is truly an act of labor and
devotion, and you've done an amazing job.
I have to say that the section introductions and the introduction to the whole book are so
compelling. I think I would love the book even without the poems, just with your introductions,
because they speak what so many of us have been feeling about why we need poetry all these
years. And they're really eloquent, so thank you so much for what you did with them. I think
poetry could not have a better advocate than Caroline Kennedy, and I know that all of us feel
extremely happy to read the book, to be in the book, to be able to share the book with people we
love, and to know that Caroline's out there talking about something that matters to all of us, a
humanizing act. So gratitude from many.
I'd like to read two poems, besides my own: one by a poet whose work I had never read, but the
pleasure of an anthology is that it makes you want to go track down this poet. You have to be a
detective to begin with to put a book together, and then as readers we have the great pleasure of
following up on finding more work by the person we've discovered in the book. So this is a poem
by Mary Ursula Bethell called "Time." I think I was attracted to it because every time a gardener
comes to my house, he looks at my raggedy yard and says, "Long overdue." [Laughter]
"Established" is a good word, much used in garden books,
"The plant, when established" . . .
Oh, become established quickly, quickly, garden!
For I am fugitive, I am very fugitive–
Those that come after me will gather these roses,
And watch, as I do now, the white wisteria
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 9
Burst, in the sunshine, from its pale green sheath.
Planned. Planted. Established. Then neglected,
Till at last the loiterer by the gate will wonder
At the old, old cottage, the old wooden cottage,
And say, "One might build here, the view is glorious;
This must have been a pretty garden once."
"Time, by Mary Ursula Bethell
The other poem is by a poet I loved a lot when I was a child, but I've never seen this poem of
hers before, so what fun to discover it in your book.
Amy Lowell, "September 1918"
This afternoon was the color of water falling through sunlight;
The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves;
The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves,
And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows.
Under a tree in the park,
Two little boys, lying flat on their faces,
Were carefully gathering red berries
To put in a pasteboard box.
Some day there will be no war,
Then I shall take out this afternoon
And turn it in my fingers,
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 10
And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate,
And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.
Today I can only gather it
And put it into my lunch-box,
For I have time for nothing
But the endeavor to balance myself
Upon a broken world.
And my humble poem is called "My Friend's Divorce."
I want her
To dig up
every plant
in her garden,
the pansies, the penta,
roses, rununculas,
thyme and the lilies,
the thing
nobody knows the name of,
unwind the morning glories
from the wire windows
of the fence,
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 11
take the blooming
and the almost-blooming
and the dormant,
especially the dormant,
and then
and then
plant them in her new yard
on the other side
of town
and see how
they breathe!
Thank you. [Applause]
ELIZABETH ALEXANDER: Hello, everybody. I'm really happy to be in this beautiful book.
It's a beautiful book. It's a handbook. So thank you so very, very much, and to read with Naomi
is a joy.
Poets do have friends and sometimes … we're all over the place [laughter] and we never get to
see each other. And sometimes we feel like we're friends even if we don't really know each other,
but we know each other through walking this strange path together. So that's a particular joy.
And to be with all of you in this building, surrounded by all of this blue and filled with so much
life and legacy is very extraordinary.
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 12
The first poem I want to read is by another poet. It's nice when we're asked to do that because
then you get to have another poet's words in your mouth, rhythms in your body, and you get to
pretend for about a minute that poem you admire is a poem that you actually wrote. This has
been an anthem for me for a long time. "To Be of Use" by Marge Piercy.
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
into the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 13
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
What could be more true? This next poem, changing course in the middle, thinking again about
friendship, is by Elizabeth Bishop, "Letter to N.Y.," thinking again of the far-flung friends.
For Louise Crane
In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays, and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:
taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,
and the trees look so queer and green
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 14
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,
and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,
and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.
–Wheat, not oats, dear. I’m afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.
"Letter to N.Y.," Elizabeth Bishop
And now I'm going to read two poems of my own. This one is called "The End." It's in the
"Heartbreak" section. But we move on. [Laughter]
"The End"
The last thing of you is a doll, velveteen and spangle,
silk douponi trousers, Ali Baba slippers that curl up at the toes,
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 15
tinsel moustache, a doll we had made in your image
for our wedding with one of me which you have.
They sat atop our coconut cake. We cut it
into snowy squares and fed each other, while God watched.
All other things are gone now: the letters boxed,
pajama-sized shirts bagged for Goodwill, odd utensils
farmed to graduating students' first apartments
(citrus zester, apple corer, rusting mandoline),
childhood pictures returned to your mother,
trinkets sorted real from fake and molten
to a single bar of gold, untruths parsed,
most things unsnarled, the rest let go
save the doll, which I find in a closet,
examine closely, then set into a hospitable tree
which I drive past daily for weeks and see it still there,
in the rain, in the wind, fading in the sun,
no one will take it, it will not blow away,
in the rain, in the wind,
it holds tight to its branch,
then one day, it is gone.
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 16
[Applause] Thank you. And then to end, this poem is called "The Dream That I Told My
Mother-in-Law." [Laughter] It is a funny title. It's not a funny poem.
"The Dream That I Told My Mother-in-Law"
In the room almost filled with our bed,
the small bedroom, the king-sized bed high up
and on casters so sometimes we would roll,
in the room in the corner of the corner
apartment on top of a hill so the bed would roll,
we felt as if we might break off and drift,
float, become our own continent.
When your mother first entered our apartment
she went straight to that room and libated our bed
with water from your homeland. Soon she saw
in my cheeks the fire and poppy stain,
and soon thereafter on that bed came the boy.
Then months, then the morning I cracked first one
then two then three eggs in a white bowl
and all had double yolks, and your mother
(now my mother) read the signs. Signs everywhere,
signs rampant, a season of signs and a vial
of white dirt brought across three continents
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 17
to the enormous white bed that rolled
and now held three, and soon held four,
four on the bed, two boys, one man, and me,
our mother reading all signs and blessing our bed,
blessing our bed filled with babies, blessing our bed
through her frailty, blessing us and our bed,
blessing us and our bed.
She began to dream
of childhood flowers, her long-gone parents.
I told her my dream in a waiting room:
a photographer photographed women,
said her portraits revealed their truest selves.
She snapped my picture, peeled back the paper,
and there was my son’s face, my first son, my self.
Mamma loved that dream so I told it again.
And soon she crossed over to her parents,
sisters, one son (War took that son.
We destroy one another), and women came
by twos and tens wrapped in her same fine white
bearing huge pans of stew, round breads, homemade wines,
and men came in suits with their ravaged faces
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 18
and together they cried and cried and cried
and keened and cried and the sound
was a live hive swelling and growing,
all the water in the world, all the salt, all the wails,
and the sound grew too big for the building and finally
lifted what needed to be lifted from the casket and we quieted
and watched it waft up and away like feather, like ash.
Daughter, she said, when her journey began, You are a mother now,
and you have to take care of the world.
Thank you. [Applause]
TOM PUTNAM: So, Caroline, I thought I'd ask the first question to you. We'll do a few
questions here before the book signing. And I agree with Naomi, that the introduction to the
book and each introduction to each …
CAROLINE KENNEDY: I was wondering when you wrote me an email about how you were
reading my introductions. I said, why is he doing that? Now I realize. Okay, go ahead.
TOM PUTNAM: And it's quite personal. We learn quite a bit about you. I marked a couple of
things here: That when you were in convent school, you were in love with your pony. That in
high school, you despaired of ever having a boyfriend. And that when you recently hit your 50th
birthday, you felt the "tiny terror of sliding down the hill into a crumpled heap of old age."
[Laughter]
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 19
You alluded to this already, but can you tell us a little bit more about not just picking the poems,
but picking the themes. Obviously it was your decision to do the various themes. So what was
that process like?
CAROLINE KENNEDY: I started with the poems themselves, and then they kind of grouped
themselves. I'm always torn because I also could see a book that you didn't know what was
coming next. But I think people -- too many people -- are still intimidated by the idea of poetry.
So I think that hopefully the sort of broad headings are maybe a little bit of a guide or break it
down into a little bit of a more manageable thing. People really often, I think, use or turn to
poetry when they're looking or feeling something specific. So in that way, I think the sections are
roughly intended to follow the major milestones of our lives -- whether that's growing up,
growing old, falling in love, or breaking up, or becoming a mother, or how to live, sort of words
of wisdom. So they sort of organized themselves. Then there's a little bit of juggling. Many
poems could go in any section, so it's intended to be a pretty loose thing.
TOM PUTNAM: You said there were some poems that were new to you. There's this whole
universe of poetry. How did you discover those new poems? Did friends send them to you?
CAROLINE KENNEDY: Well, it was the process that Naomi described. Obviously, there
were poems that people sent that were new to me, and obviously, I kind of grew up with a more
traditional exposure to poetry, but then I would go looking for something. There's a section
called "Beauty, Clothes and Things of this World." A lot of the poems I probably wouldn't have
paid all that much attention to but when I knew that I got interested in that, there's a lot of great
poems about how you see yourself and how you present yourself.
And as Naomi said, one thing leads to another; one poet leads you to more of their work. That
actually, for me, is the fun part of the project because it's this never-ending search with a little bit
of focus. So it's fun.
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 20
TOM PUTNAM: So Naomi, it's interesting, I had prepared this question beforehand and then
the Amy Lowell poem, the last lines of that are exactly the question I wanted to ask you, the last
lines, "For I have time for nothing/but the endeavor to balance myself/ upon a broken world."
As Caroline alluded, we had a conference here today for middle school teachers and librarians
and educators and Naomi was one of the speakers. In the panel this morning, she stated that
someone recently said to her that if she needed to compose herself, compose a poem, or if any of
us need to compose ourselves, then you went on to say that sometimes when you're reading the
paper or you see chaos around you, you have the inclination to write, to write a line, because that
really helps you in the face of all the things that you can't fix. So I wondered if you could
comment about the healing nature of poetry.
NAOMI SHIBAB NYE: Thank you so much for that beautiful question. I think it's something
that assails us all, that sense of the bigness of trouble and wanting to have something manageable
in our hands. I loved when you described poetry as an immediate, usually short, shorter than
other genres, and very personal, intimate experience. Sometimes we need just to find a line, a
line in someone else's poem, or find a line that we can pull together out of the air, or any line to
hold onto.
In this poem, the lines "Some day there will be no war," followed a few lines down, "Today I can
only gather it," the sweetness of this day, "and put it into my lunch-box." To me, it's the
combination of those two lines being in this poem that make it a great handle, because it feels as
if it connects to so many days we live now, although this is called "September 1918." There's
that sense of timelessness and comfort and pause and also a sense that we're not the first people
to experience this. It's always seemed to me that poems don't have to solve things. If they at
least shine some light upon them or shine some light upon our own mood or calm or chaos
within us, then they've done important work.
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 21
TOM PUTNAM: Elizabeth, we can't have you here without asking you about the ceremonial
nature of poetry. As Caroline alluded, you were asked to write and compose a poem and read it
at President Obama's Inaugural. What was that process like? And did you write that poem in a
different way because you knew it was going to be part of a ceremony? Or did the words flow
the way they do when you sit down and write a poem?
ELIZABETH ALEXANDER: Well, whenever I sit down to write a poem, it's always hard.
And so, too, with the Inaugural poem; it was no exception. I didn't want to go about it in any way
that was different from how I usually worked. I found out on December 18th that I was to do it.
Christmas was right around the corner and there was a lot going on, and the Inaugural date
wasn't going to change. It was a very, very focused time period. Of course, most of the time we
don't write with an occasion in mind. We don't write with deadlines. Naomi can tell you as well
that usually people are not waiting on the other end for us to give them their poems hot off the
presses [laughter], blowing the ink.
This was different, and the challenge was to stay cool and follow the same process as always.
Which is to say, moving through the world with antenna, moving through the world with pores
open, with ears open, jotting things down when they come, keeping track of things, not losing
those things that slip away. And then when enough scraps are gathered, to find some quiet time
to sit and put them together. I did think and I did read some of the poets who have written over
the ages. I went back to the Inaugural poems, but there were other poets like Yeats, who was
very important to look to. I looked at Heaney, Auden. I looked at poets who had a sense of
moment. And also to remind myself that the poem had to have a life outside of the Inaugural,
that I didn't want it to be a poem merely for the day. It wasn't going to have the word "Obama" in
it. It was going to be something that had to stand along with other poems.
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 22
So intense immersion, but the same practice as usual, and trying also to write out of and serve the
spirit of the moment and the spirit of all of those millions of people who worked – to harken
back to the Marge Piercy – who worked because they wanted something to be different in their
lives, and they felt that through this process they could contribute to change. That moved me
deeply, so I had that with me all the time.
TOM PUTNAM: So a few questions from the audience and we'll go to the book signing. I'll
paraphrase the first one, but it's essentially asking this question: It's called A Woman's Journey
Through Poems. In the conference we had this morning, there were authors who are sometimes
put into the box of being multicultural authors. Are you put into a box sometimes that your
poetry is more for women because you're women? How do we break out of those boxes? A
general question about what are poems for women? To any of you.
ELIZABETH ALEXANDER: Well, one thing I would just like to say about this particular
book is that you might be surprised at how many American poetry anthologies are actually quite
segregated. And this book really, really, really is not. And that is a wonderful and unusual thing.
It's unfortunate that it's a bit unusual.
I know for myself, I think everybody, not just women, or not just people of color, we are always
writing out of our identities. We are always writing out of our experiences. We are always
writing out of place and time. We are always writing out who we are. Hopefully what we do,
then, is write something that lifts a little bit above the level of the individual and can speak to
more folks. So I don't think there's anything contradictory with sort of a universal identity and a
very, very particular identity.
NAOMI SHIBAB NYE: I was exhilarated that this book contained so many poems by men. I
was embarrassed that it surprised me. [Laughter] And they're wonderful poems. So I don't mind
being placed in niches, any kind of niche, because I think they're all connected.
CAROLINE KENNEDY
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY THROUGH POEMS
APRIL 7, 2011
PAGE 23
TOM PUTNAM: Caroline, do you want to comment on that at all?
CAROLINE KENNEDY: Actually, when I started out, I was embarrassed because there were
more poems by men. And I was thinking, well, there's something really wrong with this. But of
course, men worship women, so of course it's appropriate that they all be by men. [Laughter]
And then as I read more and more, I think the women came forward. But I think it's important,
obviously, to be as universal as possible.
One of the poems that in a way I debated whether to keep in is a poem by Rupert Brooke about
all the things he loved. And it's really about attachment and objects and how much they mean,
and how you define yourself in a way, and so many memories are attached to different things
that you might have if you're the kind of person who likes to collect things, and reminds you of
people and exchange them. So there are poems about those kinds of things by women, also, but
that one is particularly … He gives a great list of all the things that he loves. And so I thought
that it doesn't matter that he's a man; he should be in there, too.
TOM PUTNAM: Well, maybe I'll end with some words from Caroline's introduction which
speak to this:
Women have always been the weavers of the world, literally and figuratively.
And poems distill our deepest emotions into a very few words – words that we
can remember, carry with us, and share with others as we talk and weave the cloth
of life.
Thank you all for being here to share in those poems with us today. [Applause]
THE END