I'm looking for Galway Kinnell's poem about Robert Frost reading his poem "The Gift Outright" at President Kennedy's inauguration. Something about how all the poets listening were distressed at how the wind blew away his papers and he seemed about to give up when he set the papers aside, reached into his great heart and gave us the poem. Talk about a "gift." Thanks.

--Chris Hayden

Thanks for the wonderful post, Ange Mlinko. The "Talk to Her" soundtrack has this (Stevensian) Caetano Veloso version and other hoodla hoo on it, and is worth it.

But really, what's up with "swoon?" Is there any other word that's so overused in poetry right now? Is ours a generation that needs smelling salts? Are whalebone corsets just around the corner?

Yes, Peter Campion, agreed. I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek there, actually -- since it seems to me those readers who are most keen on swooning dislike Wallace Stevens for not trying hard enough to break their heart.

Juxtaposing Caetano Veloso and Stevens, I thought, might prove surprising to some.

Lovely. And then there's "Co co rico co co rico" in The Waste Land--Eliot's equally sampled cockcrow to Stevens's crying dove....