Poems by Presidents features selections by eleven presidents and discusses verse by four others. While researching the sequel, Poems by First Ladies, I discovered poems by three more presidents: Millard Fillmore, Grover Cleveland, and William J. Clinton. This brings the total number of presidential poets to eighteen!
Millard Fillmore
According to Robert J. Scarry’s Millard Fillmore, the Hallmark Company acquired a valentine from 1850 at an antique store in 1956. The valentine is in Millard Fillmore’s handwriting and features his signature. The recipient was presumably his daughter’s friend Annie Brooks. Although the poem is signed, the content suggests that it was intended to be anonymous. A Hallmark representative explained, “Oftentimes suitors of the mid-19th century played tricks on one another in just that manner.”
One sends you this who loves you well
but who he is you cannot tell
And rest assured no one will prove
More worthy of my constant love.*
Seek not to know from whom it be
Lest he is not beloved by thee.
Grover Cleveland
Maury Madison included humorous, rhyming verse by Grover Cleveland in his unpublished Bards of the White House, which is discussed in Appendix E of Poems by First Ladies. According to Madison, Cleveland penned the poem in April 1902 while on a “fishing trip in Florida with Mrs. Cleveland, Miss Florence Bryant (Mrs. Fred De Peyster) and Dr. Finley.” A note accompanying the poem in the Grover Cleveland Papers purports that Cleveland deliberately misspelled his friend’s surname, which “got the goat of” Finley.
Who leaves Princeton’s classic shades,
To prowl around the Everglades?
Professor Findley.Who with lithe and stalwart limbs,
Flops about and thinks he swims?
Doctor Findley.Who tempts the depths of San Lucie,
In patient efforts to “catch he”?
J. H. Findley.Who dangling o’er the launch’s side
Soaks canvas shoes in saline tide?
Dr. Findley.Who sits with grace and hope, elate,
Watching his spinning, whirling bait?
John Findley.Who first of all, impatient sees
The place to sink his crabs and flees?
One Findley.Who feels the “strike” with rapture fine,
And yanks and jerks and breaks his line?
Findley.Who soundly sleeps, with heedless nod
Bumping his head against his rod?
Why—Findley.Who throwing spear with reckless aim,
Upsets the fire and scatters flame?
Of course—Findley.Whose kindly heart and willing hand
Have won the love of all our band?
And who in all our future days
Shall we recall with tender praise?
Our Findley.
William J. Clinton
The 2018 thriller The President Is Missing, cowritten by William J. Clinton and James Patterson, includes a three-stanza poem. As part of a flashback, a future president, Jonathan Duncan, recites a rhyming poem to his future wife, Rachel Carson. The protagonist says that while he should be studying “equal protection, the law and racial quotas,” he is fixated on “a green-eyed girl from Minnesota.” Carson acknowledges that the Minnesota rhyme is “impressive.”
The scene is inspired by how Clinton met his wife, Hillary, in the library of Yale Law School, where he stared at her and she introduced herself. In the novel, the starting point for the couple’s courtship occurs at their law school’s library, where Duncan shares his verse.
Although the poem is about a fictional First Lady, Carson is reminiscent of Hillary. Both grew up in the Midwest and attended college in Massachusetts. As with the Clintons, Carson is ahead of Duncan in law school. Hillary was on the board of editors for Yale’s law review, and Carson is the editor in chief of the law review. The moniker Rachel Carson is a nod to a biologist of the same name; her book Silent Spring, which Hillary has praised, spurred the environmental movement.
Clinton is credited as the primary author of The President Is Missing. It is unclear to what extent he composed the poem or provided guidance for it. The only part of the book that Clinton wrote single-handedly was a speech toward the end.
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