A Man for A'That.(Barack Obama chooses Robert Burns to be his poet on the upcoming presidential inaugurations)(Brief article)

Byline: Katie Baker

Barack Obama's already picked a poet for his Inauguration--but considering the grim times, a reading of Robert Burns would be just as apt. The national bard of the Scots (they're celebrating his 250th birthday on Jan. 21), Burns is known as the "poet of the poor" for his chronicles of life among the country's farmers and wayfarers. Born into poverty himself, and raised to do backbreaking agricultural work, Burns lived fast and loose before dying a near pauper at the age of 38. At times, the poet lamented his meager finances ("The prosperous man is asleep, nor hears how the whirlwinds sweep; but misery and I must watch the surly tempest blow: And it's O, fickle Fortune, O!"). But Burns was also a lifelong skeptic of wealth and rank. In "My Father Was a Farmer," he wrote of being taught as a young boy to "act a manly part, though I had ...