Robert Frost

No stranger to tragedy, Frost's father died when Robert was 11, Robert's son committed suicide and his daughter apparently suffered a nervous breakdown. These things tend to taint. Oh to start over and right wrongs! (Where is Scott Bakula when you need him?)

I connected with Frost's perception of flux and disorder as "decay" as well as his view of poetry as a "momentary stay against confusion." It earned a pencil heart in my anthology. It is this exactly.

I did, however, find our text to be slightly misleading regarding Frost's transcendentalist affirmations. In my humble opinion, there is a remote chance that "no expression, nothing to express" was taken somewhat horribly out of context, though I do agree that his poetry is a sort of photo album in that it is rife with snapshots. But there must be a more accurate description of this! Were I to venture a substitution, were I to employ a Frostette (a quote from his works) to title a biography on Rob, I would call it When Truth Broke In.

As it is in our anthology, I found myself intrigued by a question of whether or not Frost was an atheist. A lively article quickly quelled this perplexity. (I refer to it as a perplexity for the mere obviousness that someone who so clearly can see a spider ought to recognize the grand signature tangled there in the web.)

It seems I identify more with poets (feelers) than with writers (re/inventors). I like to take time with each brightly colored, neatly wrapped, sweet-n-sour, balled confection.

The Pasture
Indeed a photograph. "No expression, nothing to express." A literary pause spraying orange "Kilroy" on the wall of experience that is human life.

Mowing
Images, images and smart sayings as in:
"...my long scythe whispering to the ground."

and

"...easy gold at the hand of fay or elf..."

Lots of lovely new words to boot.

Mending Wall
This is Frost's genius showing. A rare didacticism and my favorite. Sense at last. I love the music of:

"...We have to use a spell to make them balance..."

And I love the honest look at our ridiculousness, our selfishness, our archaic mental vestiges (as referenced by blunt images of Paleolithic man). The poem reminds me of the way a fellow I know avidly protects the pecan and fig trees on property in another state. He never eats the figs and rarely the pecans, for he isn't often enough there to gather them during their times. Nearby families have been suspected of gathering the spoils of God's labor on occasion and this is somehow an outrageous offense. Would that the bearings go to rot before a mistyped blood metabolize them. The fear of squatting, the prospect of an inch/mile conversion. Words have been exchanged, and I am sick enough to see some of it and sane enough not to.

Good fences do indeed make good neighbors as long as we are as ridiculous as needing them.

The Death of the Hired Man
This was less a poem and more a story though it had at times a certain quiet soulful cadence. Another snapshot. A thing I found striking, surprising of Frost was the novel concepts that appeared as diaphanous lightbulbs over my head. These are things I've always known but never known I knew until he set them to word as in:

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in."
"I should have called it
Something you somehow haven't to deserve."

I felt genuine and sad at Frost's description of so many today:

"He never did a thing so very bad.
He don't know why he isn't quite as good
As anybody."

As the home dissolves, more and more children will grow up believing such fairy tales, and the sorrow will belong to everyone whether we like it, acknowledge it, or not.

After Apple-Picking
I was struck by the neatness of the ice in:

"I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let if fall and break."

Again, I so love the human experience depicted in lines like:

"...I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.

Some discussion preceds the poem at the link. And me only seeing another refreshing snapshot!

The Wood-Pile
This engaged me in the novelty of:

"He thought that I was after him for a feather-
The white one in his tail; like one who takes
Everything said as personal to himself."

I had to read over and over this and yet am still deriving meaning. An excellent reminder. Good for everyone.

More sheer novelty in a wood-pile left:

"...far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay."

Again:
"The slow smokeless burning of decay..."
GENIUS! I like a bit of concrete mixed with the elixir of emotion. It falls on you like granite: KA-TONK! How sweet it is!

The Road Not Taken
The silly thing is that this poem is so oft-traveled that its leaves are in fact trodden black! Even so, it would be a crime were the profundity ever missed:

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

Indeed.

The Oven Bird
All was lost. It seemed to me a snapshot of things come and gone, of cycle. I fumbled around dumb and unknowing. Alas, a grim, obligatory look upon a discussion explained all in a full, grisly vivisection, the kind of gruesome thing no poetic eye should ever behold, for love of verse so aptly cleaned leaves behind a bony, meated carcass no fire can ever cure.

Birches
Lots of reflection for a man all of 32-years-old. Yet 32 years can be short or long. This resonated with the boyhood themes of other studied authors and with images of my own childhood, the boyish part of me, and visions of the sadness of aging, reflections of year-lengthening shadows:

"So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over. ["Paging Scott Bakula."]
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return." [Crane's sacred cheese.]

So much of this in me.

"Out, Out-"
I saw it coming and did not.

"...holding up the hand,
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling."

Was reminiscent of:
"While his pale left hand was upon his chest in an attempt to thwart the going of his life..."

A bit of magic:
"The doctor put him in the dark of ether."

And harkening back to Dickinson's The Bustle In A House:

"No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs."

Fire and Ice
This is too much of the best. So choice, at length making of itself the firmest of lead balls at which to heave a giant's mallet. Solid, solid, solid! All the way around! I found myself reading it aloud over and over, licking at it like an Everlasting Gobstopper. Delicious!

Nothing Gold Can Stay
Ruined for me for all eternity by C. Thomas Howell as Ponyboy in The Outsiders. If you're young enough to have missed this flicker, stay away! I implore you: save yourself! It's too late for me. Even all the years and Frost himself can't repair the damage Coppola has done.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
I think the repetition of the last two lines is fabulous. I don't know why. I don't know why.

Desert Places
Poignant and sad.

Design
(Could have been called "Autograph".)

The Gift Outright
This was probably the least favorite of this smattering of Frost. Despite my lack of appreciation, and having nothing to do with anything, these lines:

"...But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become."

Reminded me of Albert Einstein. And the first of Shakespeare's 7 Ages. My mind is a jumping spider. (Directs to a seeming blank page. Wait for it; it's worth the trip.)

Flip through Frost's photo album. (Scroll down to bottom of page.)

Visit Robert's grave.