<p>Digging deeper and deeper for an assignment, I stumbled onto a couple of old articles. I admit freely not to understand all the fine points of the discussion -since the articles are close to fifty year old- but I find it remarkable that we could substitute the Soviets with a number of current enemies and not lose much in applicability to our current problems. Not to mention the substitution of politicians who were in the news until recently.</p>
<p>PS I wondered if Mini was in the audience at Baxter Hall until I realized that, not unlike TheDad, he must have missed by a handful of years :) </p>
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Frost talks to students at Baxter Hall, Williams College
October 1960</p>
<p>Captivating his audience with a unique display of wit and intelligence, Frost drew on the wisdom of his years to comment on life, art, and politics.</p>
<p>Politics of Politics
Poetic form did not occupy his conversation for too long: "I get so sick of the politics of poetry that it's nice once in awhile to turn to the politics of politics." And he did. Here, Frost was at his most biting. He is violently opposed to President Eisenhower's proposed plebiscite for the world. "Imagine letting everyone vote on the fate of our counties. All these years, out the window, just like that. No nation of any greatness would surrender itself to a plebiscite." </p>
<p>Eisenhower, according to the poet, is "a nice boy", but no politician. Frost referred particularly to a conversation with General Eisenhower after the war in which Ike told him, "I'm not interested in politics; I am a soldier." </p>
<p>Speaking on politics in general, he said, "I admire men who took less power than they could have had - men like Washington for example." These men saw their boundaries and knew when to stop and make way for others. </p>
<p>Passionate Preference
Within the cells in which he operates, Man's glory is still his freedom - the freedom of "passionate preference". Man advances by means of this preference which involves him in one pursuit as opposed to another. "I can't let alone of it" is the Vermont expression Frost used to characterize this instinct. </p>
<p>"The young should lead with their impulses"; but they should use the wisdom of the aged to guide them. Reason must act as a governance on the impulses of human nature. Human progress and development is the result of the application of reason to the way that impulse leads us.
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[quote]
"A Poet and a National Symbol"</p>
<p>by James Reston
Article in The New York Times
October 27, 1957</p>
<p>Frost became a familiar figure in Washington, D. C. in the late 1950's culminating with his appointment as Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress during the Eisenhower Administration.</p>
<p>Every time Robert Frost comes to town the Washington Monument stands up a little straighter. The old gentleman was here this week just when everybody was down in the dumps about the Russians, but he was full of bounce and confidence. </p>
<p>The beauty of life, said he, looking out on the golden maples on R Street, lies in struggle and change and taking tough decisions. When he heard people complaining about the Russians and the Sputnik and the endless standoff with Moscow, he said he had trouble suppressing a mocking frivolity. </p>
<p>"We ought to enjoy a standoff," he remarked. "Let it stand and deepen in meaning. Let's not be hasty about showdowns. Let's be patient and confident in our country." </p>
<p>At eighty-three, Mr. Frost is still full of poetry and plans, still wandering about the world talking to kids about what it means to be an American, still taking long walks through the Northern woods, and still urging everybody to talk up and be sassy. </p>
<p>He is against everything and everybody that want people to rely on somebody else. He is against the United Nations. He is against the welfare state. He is against conformity and easy slogans and Madison Avenue, and he hasn't seen a President he liked since Grover Cleveland. </p>
<p>"I keep reading about old Grover, and after sixty years I have to admit there were one or two things that could be said against him; but I concede it reluctantly. As Mencken said, Cleveland got on in politics, not by knuckling to politicians but scorning and defying them. He didn't go around spouting McGuffy Reader slogans or wanting to be liked. " </p>
<p>The United Nations, disturbed by Mr. Frost's opposition, suggested to him recently that he might like to write a poem celebrating the ideal of the interdependence of the nations. Sweden had given the U. N. a huge chunk of solid iron, and somebody thought that this should be built into the U. N. building as a symbol of nature's strength and unity. </p>
<p>Frost was not interested. Iron, he said, could be used to strengthen the U. N. building, or it could be used for weapons of war. That was the way with nature, he said: always confronting mankind with decisions. So he rejected the invitation with a couplet : </p>
<p>Nature within her inmost self divides
To trouble men with having to take sides. </p>
<p>His pet project at the moment is to band together all men and women who want to stamp out "togetherness." The glory of America, he says, has been its pioneers, who celebrated "separateness" and who were not always seeking protection. "There is," he remarks, "no protection without direction." </p>
<p>Mr. Frost is still a physical phenomenon. There is a comfortable, shaggy look about him but great physical and mental power. He has a pair of shoulders like a Notre Dame tackle, a shock of disobedient white hair, and a vast solidity, like a great natural object. </p>
<p>His idea, one gathers, is that America should act in the face of the Communist challenge as a great man would act. It should not be dismayed. It should not be boastful. It should be calm and watchful and industrious. It should avoid pretension and sham. It should say clearly and calmly what it means and do what it says it will do. </p>
<p>"The question for every man and every nation," he says, "is to be clear about where the first answerability lies. Are we as individuals to be answerable first only to others or to ourselves and some ideal beyond ourselves? Is the United States to be answerable first to the United Nations or to its own concept of what is right?" </p>
<p>Once we get this straight, he believes, the United States will be less entranced and preoccupied with the Soviet world, more self-reliant, more prepared psychologically for the endless struggle of existence.
Transition and change do not bother him. He is pleased with Dean Inge's reminder that when Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, Adam was heard to remark, no doubt by a reporter of the Times, "We sure are living in a period of transition. " </p>
<p>" All life," he says, "is cellular. We live by the breaking down of cells and the building up of new cells. Change is constant and unavoidable. That is the way it is with human beings and with nations, so why deplore it?" </p>
<p>To Mr. Frost most of the political pronouncements of the day are just "corn-meal mush," put out by politicians who think their "first answerability" is to what will get them re-elected, instead of what is right and true. </p>
<p>But he isn't worried. </p>
<p>"I stand here at the window and try to figure out whether American men or women swing their arms more freely. There cannot be much to fear in a country where there are so many right faces going by. I keep asking myself where they all come from, and I keep thinking that maybe God was just making them up new around the next corner. "
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