Unbeknownst to many, Senator Kennedy loved poetry. Several years ago he read for the Academy of American Poets at Poetry & the Creative Mind , which is an annual fundraising benefit for the Academy of American Poets, on April 6, 2004 in Lincoln Center as part of a lineup that included Meryl Streep, Vanessa Redgrave, Wynton Marsalis, Kevin Kline, Tony Kushner, Brice Marden, Mary-Louise Parker, Diane Sawyer, Cynthia Rowley, Louis Menand and Samantha Power. One of his favorite poems was John Brown’s Body by Stephen Vincent Benét. What follows is an excerpt of his remarks, as well as the first two stanzas of the poem. 

“When I was a student at Milton Academy, I was introduced to Stephen Vincent Benét and his epic Civil War poem "John Brown's Body." Benét won a Pulitzer Prize for this poem in 1929. I was immediately struck by the story, of course, but also by the strength of the meter and rhyme. My brother Jack was a young Congressman at the time, and I remember telling him about the poem.”

JOHN BROWN’S BODY

There were three stout pillars that held up all

The weight and tradition of Wingate Hall.

One was Cudjo and one was you

And the third was the mistress, Mary Lou.

Mary Lou Wingate, as slightly made

And as hard to break as a rapier-blade.

Bristol's daughter and Wingate's bride,

Never well since the last child died

But staring at pain with courteous eyes.

When the pain outwits it, the body dies,

Meanwhile the body bears the pain.

She loved her hands and they made her vain,

The tiny hands of her generation

That gathered the reins of the whole plantation;

The velvet sheathing the steel demurely

In the trained, light grip that holds so surely.

She was at work by candlelight,

She was at work in the dead of night,

Smoothing out troubles and healing schisms

And doctoring phthisics and rheumatisms,

Guiding the cooking and watching the baking,

The sewing, the soap-and-candle-making,

The brewing, the darning, the lady-daughters,

The births and deaths in the negro-quarters,

Seeing that Suke had some new, strong shoes

And Joe got a week in the calaboose,

While Dicey's Jacob escaped a whipping

And the jellybag dripped with its proper dripping,

And the shirts and estrangements were neatly mended,

And all of the tasks that never ended.

***

Keep up the good words and the good deeds. Peace, Linda