SPREAD | ArtCulture

By Michelle Cheung

You can still find trails of holiday magic in the Poets House where a small showcase of “Robert Frost’s Annual Christmas Cards: An Exhibition and Celebration” is on display. The poet’s Christmas chapbooks dating from 1929–1962 will be shown until January 16. The exhibit, drawn from the personal collection of Frank Platt, Vice President of the Poets House, and Ward Smith, a Frost collector, generously shares with us an intimate side of the great poet’s life. Platt, grandson of American architect Charles A. Platt, who met Frost while a student at Harvard in the early 1950s when the poet was in his late 70s. Soon after, Platt and his wife became blessed recipients of Frost’s ritual Christmas card giving. In Platt’s introduction to the collection, he said, “Even though Frost may have been the greatest living poet of his time, to me, the cards were tokens of affection and part of season’s twinkle.” Frost’s chapbooks were sent off as holiday greetings by a variety of people in his circle including Frost himself, his publisher, collectors, and friends. Initially printed in 1929 by master printer Joseph Blumenthal of The Spiral Press (who didn’t even send a copy to Frost), subsequent chapbooks were published collaboratively by Frost and Blumenthal almost yearly starting in 1934.

Like the title of a poem in one of Frost’s last Christmas chapbooks called “Accidentally on Purpose,” I had a serendipitous feeling when I stepped foot into Poets House. My original intention was to satisfy my Frost curiosities but the Poets House, in its glass-encased structure overlooking an unobstructed view of the Hudson, proved to be the bigger discovery. The 11,000 square-foot state-of-the-art space with a modern aesthetic, including an Alexander Calder mobile hanging from its two-story ceiling, houses over fifty thousand volumes of poetry. Alongside current anthologies, you will find works from legendary poets of all periods, writing all genres. Humorously enough, you will even find “John Keats’s Porridge” in the selection. Though the Poets House building is brand new and a departure from the spacial coziness of its former SoHo loft (they moved to the new quarters only three months ago), the space still maintains a certain warmth. It warps you to a world where you can envision poets thrive—a place of creativity, camaraderie, and sheer appreciation of the written word.

The Poets House was founded almost twenty-five years ago by two-time poet laureate Stanley Kunitz and visionary arts administrator Elizabeth Kray. In my conversation with Suzanne Wise, the Poets House publicist, Kunitz had originally envisioned a brownstone with a bedroom for visiting poets and a communal space to write and share poetry. They soon figured out that a brownstone cannot support the weight of a library and settled for a small loft space in SoHo where poets, readers, and poetry co-existed for the past twenty or so years. To Kunitz, the Poets House is a place that must never be possessed, but shared. He reflected this vision in his decision to leave off the possessive apostrophe in “Poets.” Today, in this impressive house of poetry, Kunitz’s legacy lives on.

“Robert Frost’s Annual Christmas Cards: An Exhibition and Celebration” will be exhibited in the Poets House until January 16. The Poets House also has an extensive children’s program, including one with U.S. Children’s Poet Laureate Mary Ann Hoberman on April 17, the children’s room’s official opening. The general spring program season will also start in April with readings and panels on ecology, jazz, and Chinese and Cuban poetry. For more details, visit the Poets House website.