“We the Poets,” created in 2014 and 2015, features ten poets reading poems inspired by archival documents. This moving series was created in celebration of National Poetry Month, with the National Archives partnering with the Academy of American Poets.
All the poets tell of our nation’s small and large history. Behind them, in the background, flicker artwork, photographs of the National Archives, and particular records.
Poet Terence Wench’s “The Document,” entry 6, is especially evocative of the persistence of documents in our lives, the ephemerality of materials and yet the permanency given them in the Archives. “They want to tell us who we are or who we should want to be.” They are “language security blankets.”
Sandra Beasley’s “The Conversation,” entry 9, is another poem that gives attention to the centrality of the context of records. The author speaks of a transcript from the space flight, Feb. 20, 1962, and compares “the movie version” to the “work-a-day chatter” on the pages. She notes the possibility of what would be saved in a fire. These would be materials such as the Constitution rolled up quickly, planned for saving. But she claims the transcript, for it tells of her grandfather’s role as a navy captain assigned to John Glenn, checking all the places the space trip passed, biting lips about the collectivity and the individuality involved in such endeavors, and these emotions lasting or not on a transcript.
Keeping (and Telling) the Past 