Who was the first United States president to write a book of poetry?
John Quincy Adams, whose epic poem Dermot MacMorrogh or the Conquest of Ireland was published in 1832, was the first U.S. president to write a book of poetry. Adams’s shorter verse was collected and published posthumously in the book Poems of Religion and Society (1848). In 1995, Jimmy Carter’s Always a Reckoning, and Other Poems (New York: Times Books) became the first collection of poems published by a U.S. president during his lifetime. Always a Reckoning was published fourteen years after Carter’s final year in office.
