Hi folks. I went off the deep end in my personal blog about literary criticism. You might want to read it here: I Don’t Get Literary Criticism.

Last night I was dead tired when I got home, for some reason. Was it the emotional letdown after the successful class I taught during yesterday’s noon hour? Or was it my bagworm ministry for 35 minutes before church yesterday evening? Or might it just be over-eating and under-sleeping while the wife’s away? For whatever reason, I slept the sleep of the dead last night–until about 3:30 AM, when I woke up and felt something crawling on me, something insect-sized. I pulled it off, squished it between fingers, and rolled over. I suspect a tick picked up from the bagworm infested bush. Of course, after that I imagined every little itch to be a tick and probably pulled off several imaginary ones. Still, I got back to sleep and slept well.

I’m working on several articles for Suite101.com, including one on a book I checked out from the Bentonville library, The Notebooks of Robert Frost. I waited for this book to come in, then was somewhat disappointed in it when I finally got it. I guess I expected to see drafts of all of Frost’s famous poems and observe how he went about his compositions. Or maybe I expected copious notes of his poetic philosophy, or preparation for his many lectures.

The book has little of that. I’m going to write a review of it for Suite101.com, so I can’t put all of what I want to say here. But I did find an interesting segment with some quotes on poetry. Quotations allegedly from Frost about “Poetry is…” are rampant, such as “Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom.” Maybe he said this, maybe he didn’t. I never see those with source citations. But this book documents some things Frost wrote about poetry. In his Notebook 38, he wrote the following under the heading “Poetry”:

• Poetry is prowess
• Poetry is the renewal of words
• Poetry is the dawning of an idea
• Poetry is that which tends to evaporate from both prose and verse when translated.
• Poetry is the Liberal Arts. The Liberal Arts are Poetry.
• A poem is a momentary stay against confusion
• Poet is a master of sentiment

According to footnotes in the book, the prowess comment would be related to Frost’s lecture titled “Poetry as Prowess”, and the renewal comment is related to his lecture titled “The Renewal of Words”.

Now, I have not yet studied these sayings of Frost. Perhaps he wrote them together in notebook 38 as a list of lectures given or that he thought he might give someday. I see that he repeated a couple of these in notebook 26.

The notebooks are hard reading, and I can see I would need to own a copy to really get much out of them, for in the little time I have the book for (actually, it’s already three days overdue), and as difficult as it is to read for long sittings, I’m not getting all that much out of it. But he has some gems in it that are worth thinking and remembering. In the same notebook 38, after his list of what poetry is, he has this statement, evidently intended to be another statement of what poetry is:

• Difference between smoke and smoke rings.

That’s good enough for me. Off to the library now to beg forgiveness and hopefully renew this overdue book for a couple of more weeks. I need to see a few more gems in it.

Given that Robert Frost is my favorite poet, and that I’ve been writing some articles on him at Suite101.com, I decided to do a little more research on him. So I got the book from the public library Robert Frost by Philip L. Gerber, 1982 G. H. Hall & Co. ISBN 0-8057-7348-7. This was originally published in 1966, and is part of the “Twayne’s United States Authors Series.”

At 171 pages, this is rather slim as Frost career-length reviews go. This is based on the bibliography in the book, which lists several multi-volume studies. As such, I suppose this could be called a Frost primer. That’s perfect for me. It is divided into six chapters:

1. Man Into Myth: Frost’s Life
2. Poet in a Landscape: Frost’s Career
3. The Appropriate Tools: Frost’s Craftsmanship
4. The Aim Was Song: Frost’s Theories
5. Roughly Zones: Frost’s Themes
6. Testing Greatness: Frost’s Critical Reception

Each of these presented a pretty good discussion of the subject. Well, to my layman’s mind it was a good discussion. I’m sure those more learned in Frost would laugh at the brevity of it. But again I suggest that this is exactly the type of book needed for someone who had never read a Frost criticism or biography. The chapter on his life did a good job of exploding the myth Frost worked so hard to create: that he was a New England farmer. He may have done some of that, but except perhaps for some very early years he never did it to make money. Possibly his living on a farm and resulting observations gave fodder for poems. If so, who cares exactly what his career was? Although he never earned a degree, he spent a lot of years on college campuses, either as poet-in-residence or professor. It would seem his main income came from these, supplemented by book sales. Or maybe the other way around.

My favorite chapters were on Frost’s craftsmanship and on his theories of poetry. He alone among the major American poets bucked the trend to imagism and modernism (okay, maybe Edna St. Vincent Milay also). He was called old fashioned for writing in rhyme, meter, and form. Although his first couple of books were highly acclaimed, the “experts” said he would have no staying power. He proved them wrong, and I, in my semi-learned state, believe his staying power was because he wrote in form. People still like that, and are more likely to buy that than other things that pass as poetry.

I especially liked the things Gerber said about “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.” While I can’t really continue to use this as an excuse, it was this poem, or rather it’s treatment by a succession of English teachers in junior and senior high, that ruined poetry for me for thirty years. They said this was a suicide poem. I didn’t see it. They said I had to see it. I said I didn’t see it. They said I had to see it. I said I didn’t. I decided I either wasn’t cut out for poetry or it was something I wouldn’t get, so from that point on I parted ways with it, building a New England stone wall between us. Here’s what Gerber wrote about it:

Critics have from the start appreciated his skill in handling metaphor and symbol. Perhaps it is a part of his basis for protest that in their zeal the critics overdid it, as they have generally overdone so much in the twentieth century and as they have specifically overdone Frost’s own “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

To say that “Stopping by Woods” has been one of the most discussed poems of the twentieth century is an understatement. It has been analyzed, explicated, dissected–sometimes brilliantly–but altogether to the point of tedium. …Proud as Frost was of this lyric, and only partly because it got into the anthologies more frequently than any other, he felt that readers made themselves too busy over “my heavy duty poem” and squeezed it for meanings not present….”

…Frost ordinarily gained amusement from the meanings people located in his work, meanings he claimed to have been totally unaware of. …he became downright touchy about the “busymindedness” that inspired the ceaseless flow of questions, many of them asinine indeed, concerning the minutiae of “Stopping by Woods.”

He was irritated by people who asked to know the name of the man who did the stopping. It appalled him to have someone write inquiring whether those woods really fill up with snow. …Who would be going home that way so late at night? What did the woods mean? What did the snow stand for? Could a horse really ask questions?

Ah, so I was right and my teachers were wrong! And to think they cost me thirty years–no, can’t blame them. But wait, what’s that Gerber writes just a little further on?

Like other major poets, Robert Frost writes on multiple levels of meaning. …Frost’s symbols are hidden like children’s Easter eggs–barely out of reach and easily found.

…His gift was for creating an artifice so vivid, moving, and significant on the initial level that any probing for further rewards can seem like meddlesome prying….

Well, I guess I’ll have to give up and begin looking for those hidden meanings Frost hid like Easter eggs. At least I don’t have to go digging holes to do so.

The section “How Poems Arise” is a good two page description of how Frost went about capturing ideas and setting them to verse. I won’t go into details, but it’s not too far from my own: a long gestation period before anything ever escapes the mind and finds paper.

I give this book an enthusiastic recommendation for all who want to explore Robert Frost and his world and his poetry. It’s a shame it has to go back to the library in a few days. I could benefit from a second reading.

In my new-found freelance career, I’m posting at Suite101.com. Two of my first handful of articles there are about Robert Frost’s poem “Into My Own.” This was the first poem in Frost’s first book, A Boy’s Will. I began reading this poem about three of four years ago after I bought the book, The Poetry of Robert Frost: The collected poems, complete and unabridged. “Into My Own” was the first poem in the book, given that the book is arranged chronologically by publication. I’ve read on farther into the book, but keep coming back to this one.

Frost uses a number of poetic devices in the poem. His form is the sonnet, but with rhyming couplets in lieu of any of the sonnet interlocking rhymes. His meter is iambic, as the sonnet demands. He uses metaphor and imagery. His word choices are great. The line breaks are masterfully chosen. Even though the form dictates where a line break should be, Frost’s lines progress in a way that later lines requires re-interpretation of earlier lines. What more could you ask for in a poem?

I’m writing a series of articles on Suite 101 about this poem. So far I have posted, or have enough material for, the following.

• Robert Frost’s “Into My Own”: An Overview
• Imagery and Metaphor in “Into My Own”
• Word Choices in “Into My Own”
• Rhyme and Meter Enhance “Into My Own”
• Effective Use of Line Breaks in “Into My Own”

The 800 word limitation in Suite 101 articles means I need to break this up as shown. Will I write all five articles? I’m not sure, but I’m seriously thinking about it.

But as I’ve done so I’m somewhat sobered concerning my own poetry. Frost is such a master, I shouldn’t compare myself to him. Yet, when I read “Into My Own”, one of his less-well known poems, and see how much excellence is in it, I can’t help but wish I could do as well. Did Frost set out to do all that he did in this one 14 line poem? Did he really think through those excellent word choices? Did he plan the poem to progressively reveal the character and to not finish with the character building until the last line? Or did the poem just come out in a rush of emotion and creativity, as many people think you should write poetry?

Well, it’s something to strive for, that’s for sure. But, given that I have not analyzed any of Frost’s other poems as much as I have this one, I’m wondering what else is in store for me in these 607 pages. Will I analyze the rest of them to such an extent that I write five 600-word essays on each one? That would be a lifetime of work.