![\"IMG_2893\"](\"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/files\/2014\/07\/IMG_2893.jpg\")
<\/a>American Studies stands at the crossroads of history and literature and I found an item in the Watkinson that is so apropos for the two topics.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Watkinson holds two copies of Dedication: And The Gift Outright by Robert Frost The Inaugural Address of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Washington, D.C., January the Twentieth, 1961<\/i>.<\/p>\nFrost was the first poet to recite a poem at the inauguration of a president.\u00a0 Initially Kennedy asked Frost to recite \u201cThe Gift Outright;\u201d a poem published two decades earlier.\u00a0 But the poet wrote a poem titled \u201cDedication\u201d, specifically for the inauguration.\u00a0 However, he had little time to memorize it and when he tried to read it, he could only get a few lines in.\u00a0 The glare off of the snow on that January day was too bright for the elderly Frost to read.\u00a0 So he went back to the original plan and recited \u201cThe Gift Outright\u201d from memory changing the phrase in the last line to \u201csuch as she will become\u201d from \u201csuch as she would become\u201d at the new president\u2019s request.<\/p>\n
Kennedy and Frost had a history.\u00a0 At a press conference <\/a>before Kennedy even announced his candidacy, Frost predicted that the youthful Massachusetts senator would become the next president.\u00a0 It was at the Waldorf Astoria, prior to a gala to celebrate Frost\u2019s 85th birthday. \u201cAmong the questions asked was one concerning the alleged decline of New England, to which Frost responded: \u2018The next President of the United States will be from Boston. Does that sound as if New England is decaying?\u2019 Pressed to name who Frost meant, he replied: \u2018He\u2019s a Puritan named Kennedy. The only Puritans left these days are the Roman Catholics. There. I guess I wear my politics on my sleeve.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Kennedy, in turn, would often close campaign speeches with two lines from the final stanza of \u201cStopping By The Woods on a Snowy Evening.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut I have promises to keep, \/ And miles to go before I sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n Kennedy invited Frost to take part in the inauguration and the old poet replied via telegram:\u00a0 \u201cIf you can bear at your age the honor of being made President of the United States, I ought to be able at my age to bear the honor of taking some part in your inauguration. I may not be equal to it but I can accept it for my cause\u2014the arts, poetry, now for the first time taken into the affairs of statesmen.\u201d<\/p>\n Kennedy\u2019s inaugural address is perhaps one of the most famous American speeches.\u00a0 (A number of lists online have it as the #2 American speech of the 20th<\/sup> Century after Martin Luther King\u2019s \u201cI Have a Dream.\u201d) Both of Frost\u2019s poem\u2019s, along with Kennedy\u2019s inaugural address appear in this short book.<\/p>\n The book itself was printed by Spiral Press.\u00a0 It was a limited edition.\u00a0 The Watkinson holds two of the 500 copies.\u00a0 Spiral Press was a small publisher run by Joseph Blumenthal.\u00a0 Blumenthal was a longtime collaborator with Frost.\u00a0 He met the poet in 1930 when Frost\u2019s collected poems were published and he continued a relationship with him that lasted over three decades.\u00a0 Blumenthal was part of the fine-press movement.\u00a0 Blumenthal<\/a> cared about the art of book design.\u00a0 He once said about his work that \u201cCraftsmanship has always been the core, and I\u2019ve always devoted a maximum of effort to every job, big or small, profitable or not, from a book to a business card. \u201c\u00a0 He was an artisan and he used high quality paper, vintage inks, and an old style typeface that he invented himself.<\/p>\n The typeface was originally called Spiral, after his publishing house.\u00a0 But once it became available commercially, the name was changed to Emerson.\u00a0 Emerson is a Roman typeface.\u00a0\u00a0 It is noted for wide capitals and distinctive foot serifs of the lower-case a, d, and u.\u00a0 Louis Hoell first cut it in Frankfurt at the Bauer Type Foundry in 1930.\u00a0 It was then recut for the Monotype Corporation by Stanley Morison in 1935.\u00a0 It first appeared in an edition of Ralph Waldo Emerson\u2019s Nature<\/i>; thus, the name of the typeface.\u00a0 A distinguished calligrapher, Reynolds Stone, favorably cited the typeface in a review, \u201c(Emerson) avoided the rigidity of a modern face and preserved some of the virtues of the classic Renaissance types.\u201d<\/p>\n The book that I examined was copy 340 of 500.\u00a0 It is a thin volume; covered with wrappers of tissue. The title page says \u201cDedication.\u00a0 The Gift Outright. The Inaugural Address.\u201d\u00a0 This is followed by the Presidential Seal and the location and date \u201cWashington D.C.\u00a0 January the twentieth, 1961.\u201d\u00a0 German artist and graphic designer Fritz Kredel created the woodcut of the Presidential Seal for Kennedy\u2019s inauguration, which appears on the page\u00a0\u00a0 The paper has a coarseness to it.\u00a0 The type is large.\u00a0 Legibility is one of the goals that the printer Blumenthal aimed for. \u201cFine printing,\u201d he once wrote, \u201cis not fancy printing. It is simply (if not so simple) an articulate search for clarity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [Posted by Judith Daly for AMST 851: The World of Rare Books (Instructor: Richard Ring)] American Studies stands at the crossroads of history and literature and I found an item in the Watkinson that is so apropos for the two topics.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Watkinson holds two copies of Dedication: And The Gift Outright by Robert Frost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":583,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581\/revisions\/583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}