Derricotte Honored for Poetry at Millennium Evening at the White House
On April 22, 1998, a hundred or more poets and supporters of poetry gathered for a Millennium Evening to celebrate poetry at the White House. It was a beautiful, clear evening. At 6:30 p.m., the poets paused momentarily outside of the gate to be passed through security. I stopped with Galway Kinnell and Phil Levine, who remembered that the security check had been much more elaborate the last time poets convened at the invitation of the Carters. We entered through the gleaming downstairs hall, with the elegant portraits of the Presidents. I was instructed by a fellow poet to be sure not to miss the women's bathroom, which held the portraits of the first ladies, including a famous one of Jackie.
I hadn't known what kind of evening it would be. I suspected that we would be rushed through a line to shake hands. I soon became aware that it was going to be a very different evening than I had expected. The poets congregated in the upstairs hall for their first drink, where they viewed a small collection which the Librarian of Congress, who was one of the guests, had set up for display. Imagine inviting a librarian over for cocktails who can take out Walt Whitman's handwritten personal notebook overnight, in which he had penned, with scratch outs and insertions, the original version of "Song of Myself!" Among the poets attending were W.S. Merwin, Lucille Clifton, Mark Doty, James Tate, Gerald Stern, Jorie Graham, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ed Hirsh and Stanley Kunitz.
After about an hour of sipping and mixing--the galleries off of the hall were open to us, the beautiful green room and red room--we were ushered into the East Room where, surrounded by cameras (the event was broadcast on C-Span), the President and Hilary Clinton welcomed us. The First Lady said, "To you who speak the great speech of the world, who silence the wide noise around us, we are honored to welcome you to the White House."
We listened to the Poets Laureates Robert Pinsky, Bob Hass and Rita Dove who read a few of their favorite American poems. The President and Hilary Clinton read a few also. Selections were read by Whitman, Langston Hughes, Robinson Jeffers, Emily Dickinson, Robert Hayden, Anne Bradstreet, William Carlos Williams, and others.
I was most impressed by the President's intelligent remarks on the importance of poetry, and by his rapt attention as the poets read. He ended his remarks by saying, "Some presidents have thought they were poets or wanted to be poets. George Washington tried writing poems. So did John Quincy Adams. Luckily for you, I haven't written any poetry in twenty years."
We adjourned to the dining room for a buffet supper and a wonderful, informal evening with the President and First Lady. Bill Styron remembered a dinner with Bill Clinton when he was still governor. He had decided that Bill really did love literature because he couldn't have learned about all of the books they had discussed unless he had been reading for a long time. The President and First Lady stayed until almost midnight, chatting, being attentive, responsive, and, yes, seeming to have a good time.
Finally, the last poets remaining--I was one of them--were tactfully ushered out. It was an unforgettable evening. How many times in my life will I be able to spend an evening with so many of the poets that I love and treasure? How many times will I have the sense that, perhaps, literature really does matter in that world, too?