Jimmy Carter’s Lifelong Love of Poetry

The following is a guest post by Peter Armenti, the English and American literature specialist for the Main Reading Room at the Library of Congress, in honor of former President Jimmy Carter (1924-2024).

Former President Jimmy Carter’s lifelong love of poetry is handsomely represented in the Library of Congress collections. Carter’s Always a Reckoning and Other Poems (1995), held by the Library, was the first collection of poems published by a U.S. President during his lifetime. Published fourteen years after Carter’s final year in office, it was the culmination of a lifetime love of poetry.

Carter’s earliest forays into the world of poetry began in elementary and high school. As a young student at the Plains school in Georgia, Carter and his classmates were required by their English teacher Julia Coleman to memorize famous poems and write poetry of their own. It was “Miss Julia,” as Coleman was known by students, who provided Carter with his first true exposure to poetry.

Carter didn’t limit his poetry reading to the classroom; as a young adult he also read it for enjoyment, and he even dabbled in poetry writing, as documented through newspaper and literary journal articles available here at the Library. As he describes in an interview in the Spring/Summer 1994 issue of New Orleans Review he “wrote some poems as a schoolboy, a naval officer, and love letters to Rosalynn,” his future wife—though he didn’t keep these earlier poems or make an effort to hone his craft (p. 29).

It wasn’t until the early 1990s that Carter began to write poetry more seriously and consider publishing a collection of his poems. In a December 7, 2003 interview with David Kronke in the Los Angeles Daily News, Carter said that “ten years ago, I wanted to write a book of poems. I approached with some temerity a couple of distinguished poets at the University of Arkansas who took me under their wing, and I received the equivalent of a postgraduate course in poetry.” The poets in question were Miller Williams and James Whitehead, and they served as Carter’s unofficial poetry mentors as he worked on his book. In the October 7, 1994 episode of A Word on Words, hosted by John Seigenthaler and available online through the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, Whitehead talks about Carter’s book (starting at the 15:57 mark):

Miller Williams and I worked with President Carter on the book, and did some editing, and talked to him about about writing poetry. And he wrote what he wanted to…. [I]t’s wonderful, energetic poetry…. And we had wonderful afternoons [when] we talked about poetry, all afternoon, four or five hours.

You can watch the full segment below:

Carter’s interest in poetry was apparent throughout his political career. As governor of Georgia, Carter appointed Conrad Aiken the state poet laureate of Georgia in 1973, followed by John Ransom Lewis, Jr., in 1974. In a June 19, 1977, New York Times interview with Harvey Shapiro, Carter describes how the work of his favorite poet, Dylan Thomas, made its way into his legislative affairs: “In 1974, we had a special session in the Legislature in Georgia. About 10 or 12 members of the Senate and I listened to the recordings of Dylan Thomas reciting his own poetry. And we did this three or four afternoons after the special sessions writing the Constitution.”

When Carter was elected President, he asked James Dickey—the 1966-1968 Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—to compose a poem for presentation at his inaugural ceremonies. Dickey’s poem, “The Strength of Fields,” was read by Dickey as part of the January 19 televised Inauguration Eve gala at the Kennedy Center. (Because Dickey’s poem wasn’t read at the inauguration itself, he is not counted among the six poets—including Miller Williams—who have read at presidential inaugurations.)

Several days earlier, amidst weeklong inaugural ceremonies for Carter, a handful of poets participated in an evening of poetry at the Folger Shakespeare Library. One of the participants was the Library’s then-current Consultant in Poetry, Robert Hayden. Carter’s note of thanks to Hayden, in which he writes that Hayden “set a magnificent example of what we Americans can accomplish by sharing out talents and energies with each other,” appears below:

Hayden’s February 18, 1977, letter in reply to Carter’s (featured at the top of this post) notes he was honored to be included in the program and acknowledges Carter’s role in promoting poetry to the American public through a reference to Langston Hughes’s poem “I, Too“: “As a poet, I wish to thank you for what you have done to encourage a wider recognition of the value of poetry in our culture and that poets ‘too sing America.'”

One lesser-known event during Carter’s presidency that played a minor role in shaping literary history occurred in 1977, when Carter toured Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey. As I mentioned, Carter’s favorite poet was Dylan Thomas—lines from Thomas’s poem “The Hand that Signed the Paper” appears at the beginning of Carter’s 1975 autobiography, Why Not the Best—and during his trip Carter expressed dismay that Thomas was not commemorated in Poet’s Corner. Four years later, a memorial plaque to Thomas was installed. The Poet’s Corner affair is addressed by Carter himself in his poem “A President Expresses Concern on a Visit to Westminster Abbey” (Always a Reckoning, p. 71), in which Carter describes his effort to have Thomas considered inclusion:

We launched a clumsy, weak campaign,
the bishops met
and listened to the lilting lines again.
Later on, some Welshmen brought to me
a copy of the stone
that honors now the beauty he set free
from a godhead of his own.

Just as the beginning of Carter’s presidency was marked by poetry, so was the end. On January 3, 1980, the White House organized a major gathering of poets, “A Salute to Poetry and American Poets.” Hundreds of poets attended the gathering, including former Consultant in Poetry Robert Hayden. Carter helped finalize the list of twenty-one poets participating in the event, among them Consultant in Poetry Gwendolyn Brooks and future U.S. Poet Laureate Louise Glück.

When Carter returned home to Plains, Georgia, in 1981 after his term in the White House, Miller Williams and James Whitehead both wrote poems honoring Carter. Williams’s poem “Sir” (p. 470) and Whitehead’s poem “For President Jimmy Carter on His Homecoming” (p. 471) were later published in the Summer 1981 issue (v. 3, no. 4) of New England Review. You can listen to Whitehead read his poem, which champions Carter as “a steward for the earth” who “cared for human dignity,” starting at 17:02 of the aforementioned A Word on Words episode. I close this post with the last stanza of the poem, which seems an appropriate epitaph for a man whose life was so full of love for all of Earth’s inhabitants:

People and history
Begin to say it’s clear you love the earth,
Day in, day out, so much you catch your breath
To imagine how The Death
Might take the possibility of love away.
Thank you, sir, I’ve nothing more to say.