The Courage to be New, signed by Robert Frost.
The first printed appearance of the first two stanzas, produced for a memorial dedication ceremony in Ripton, Vermont
Ripton, Vermont: Printed for the dedication services of Orris C. Manning Memorial Park, 1946. First edition. Broadsheet. This scarce item is the first printed appearance of the first half of Frost's poem "The Courage to Be New". This handsome, diminutive broadsheet was printed for the 28 July 1946 dedication services of Orris C. Manning Memorial Park in Ripton Vermont, this copy signed "Robert Frost" in blue ink below his printed name. Condition is fine, the paper clean and complete with no loss, tears, or appreciable soiling or toning, Frost's signature clear and distinct.
The little broadsheet is printed in blue and black on a 7.25 x 4.875 inches sheet of heavy wove cream paper with untrimmed fore and bottom edges. It is headed with a wing-spread eagle surrounded by stars, with "Decoration by Thoreau MacDonald" attribution printed at the foot. Frost's poem "The Courage to Be New" was published in sixteen lines in four stanzas in his 1947 collection Steeple Bush. Here, Frost published just the first two stanzas and eight lines, titled "1946". The only other textual difference is hyphenation here in line 5 of "Heart-broken" which in Steeple Bush is published as "Heartbroken".
"The occasion of Frost's poem was the post-World War II move to found a "Federation of Mankind" that led to the United Nations." The poem's satirical tone in the third and fourth stanzas portrays the acknowledged intention and resolve of the first two stanzas as nonetheless "without a firm plan or sense of direction" and "Frost, on the whole, seems skeptical about a plan that failed once before (the post-World War I League of Nations), especially one that presumes it is possible to change the basic human nature that has led to war."
Orris C. Manning (1915-1943) was killed in action on 30 June 1943 during the Second World War in the Solomon Islands. His plaque, "dedicated by the Community Club, the town of Ripton and relatives," is located at 1311 Vermont Route 125, as listed in The National War Memorial Registry.
Frost had a long-standing connection to the tiny town of Ripton, in Vermont’s Green Mountains, having summered and taught there beginning in the early 1920s. Ripton is home to the prestigious Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, which Frost helped conceive and with which he was indelibly associated. Following the death of his wife, from 1939 until his own death in 1963, Frost spent summer and fall months in a rustic cabin on the Homer Noble Farm in Ripton, which is now owned and maintained as a museum by Middlebury College. Nearby, along the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail in the Green Mountain National Forest, a curated selection of Frost's poems is displayed on plaques, including "A Winter Eden" from West-Running Brook.
References: Crane A28; Tuten and Zubizarreta; The National War Memorial Registry. Item #008737
Price: $950.00