Robert Frost

FROM ONE MY RECENT BLOG ENTRIES...IS ANYONE INTERESTED IN DISCUSSING FROST?

I am so tired of Robert Frost's two most famous poems. Whose woods are these? And two roads diverged. I've heard these poems repeated and repeated, endured countless references to them in the media and in student work to the point of becoming so sick and tired of Robert Frost. And all those images of him on TV shaking that gray head of his...and those eyebrows! Those eyebrows!

And that's why I've put off getting into Robert Frost's poetry. However, tonight I was skimming through an anthology and found a Frost poem that I like very much. I really must look at some of his less read work. He was a stunning poet.

Desert Places
by Robert Frost

Snow falling and night falling fast oh fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

I know, I know, another snowy evening. But this poem makes me curious to look back at that other, oft repeated poem. Maybe there's something I can salvage from that old standby. The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. Suddenly that sounds a bit menacing. The first line in this stanza certainly sounds menacing: snow and night falling "fast oh fast." It feels almost apocalyptic. The weeds and stubble showing through the snow has always gripped my attention and tried to tell me some strange, elusive truth.

The woods around it have it--it is theirs,
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

Notice, the animals aren't "safe" in their lairs, but smothered in them. Even the promise of home and a warm bed holds no appeal to this speaker. And the speaker doesn't even warrant being counted among the living: "I am too absent-spirited to count..." Even loneliness, personified here, doesn't notice the speaker! That is an extreme form of alienation.

And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less--
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

As profound as this present loneliness is, the speaker knows it will grow before it will diminish. Life will become an even "blanker whiteness" than it is now. The speaker is nearly completely hollowed out, having "no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

The speaker cannot be frightened by any form of alienation, not even the vastness, the airless void, of outer space. The speaker's "own desert places" are places most terrifying and void of spiritual significance. It is the void in the speaker's own psyche.

Thankfully, there have been few times in my life when I've felt this empty and alone. But I have felt it, and so I know how true this poem is to the experience.

I really must begin paying more attention to Frost. I've got to shake my head free from the old prejudices that have gripped me so long.

I think I need to learn the lesson that the great critic Lionel Trilling learned in 1958:

In 1958, when Frost turned 85, his publisher gave a party in his honor at the Waldorf-Astoria and invited Lionel Trilling to be the featured speaker. Trilling, who preferred cities to rural idylls, shocked everyone by confessing that he had only recently come to admire Frost's work, specifically for its overlooked grimness. ''I regard Robert Frost as a terrifying poet,'' he announced. Trilling sent a letter to Frost apologizing for the stir his remarks had caused. ''Not distressed at all,'' Frost wrote back. ''You made my birthday a surprise party.''

The American poet, Robert Frost is one of my favorites of 'modern and copntemporary" poets. Frost's poems are relevant and it is an enjoyment to read them. I will try to appreciate Carl Sanburg, and keep on trying very hard to understand the meanings of his poetry's style. Do you like T.S. Elliot, a British poet?

I've had to work hard to love Eliot. In fact, I just did a short blog entry on him. It has been easier to love Eliot for me than Frost.

As I said, I'm so sick of Frost's more commonly read and repeated poems. I need to put aside my prejudices and look at him in a fresh way. My blog entry was an attempt to do that. I thought maybe some people here might have things to add to the conversation.

I love your analysis, Theresa. Somehow, it connects with the story in the other thread about the mouse sent away into a wild he had never experienced. The man alone in a cold world made alien with snow seems so much like the poor mouse released to fend for itself.

I was sensitive, too, as a child. Well, still am. I can relate to getting so upset by a story that the book had to be banned from the classroom. My mother once banned the TV show "Lassie" from our house because of an episode about a wolverine that we were afraid was going to maul Lassie.

The subject of alienation in Frost's poem is so well handled. When he says, "They cannot scare me with their empty spaces" I really understand. The speaker's horror is absolute. That is an awful position to be in.

That other poem, the woods are lovely dark and deep: now I think he is addressing the beauty and terror of life. It is not just a lovely poem about horses, bells, and snow.

Agree with you that those Frost poems suffer from over-exposure. It's too bad because it turns people off from the other poems. It's like trying to get people to really read the beatitudes. Or when kids in school are forced to read an inferior work like Ethan Frome and thereafter won't touch the later great stuff that Wharton wrote.

After Frost, though, I would have liked a 50 year moratorium on poems about trees.

I have just come around to Frost, because Edward Hopper loved his work so much, and soaked himself in the poems. Just returning from the Art Institute of Chicago, where I viewed the Hopper exhibit, I have now purchased Frost's complete poems and plan to spend some quality time digesting some of them. If you're still doing this, Theresa, please don't hesitate to tell us what you're reading and finding out about Frost now. I had never read Desert Places until seeing your post. I guess I hadn't seen that menacing note till now. Previously I had seen Frost on the same page as Emerson, feeling that nature put out a call to one who paused long enough to listen and feel. I'll take another look now, and spend more time with this New England bard.

Thank you.

#7: I plan to do some serious study of Frost this summer. Because frost was probably bi-polar, I can understand now why there is that sense menace in his work. I just never took the time to really pay attention to him before because I was tired of his more commonly read poems. They had become so "ordinary" that I couldn't see them. I hope we can all keep this thread going and learn together. Thank you!

#7: Come to think about it, isn't there a sense of menace in Hopper's work, too?

The menace theme has been explored in Hopper. He loved film noir, and went to the movies repeatedly when he couldn't paint. He liked "Public Enemy," and frequently lost himself in Cagney and Bogart flicks. He was abusive to his wife, physically as well as psychologically. And I think (I'll have to re-check this) Hemingway wrote "The Killers" as a result of seeing "Night Hawks"--something that Hopper was pleased to find out. Also, Alfred Hithcock's set designer was instructed to build the Bates Hotel in Psycho to look like Hopper's "House by the Railroad."

#10: Do tell! I didn't know any of that! How intriguing! I just know I've felt that strange, dark place inside myself after looking at some of Hopper's paintings. That feeling of profound isolation like Frost talks about in "Desert Places." Thanks so much for telling me these things!