I find it hard to get Robert Frost out of my head.
Of course I wrote a long biography of him in the late nineties: Robert Frost: A Life. That book, in one way or another, took about twenty-five years to write.
I had adored the poems of Frost in high school and college. But in the summer of 1975, I arrived on the campus of Dartmouth College, to begin a career in teaching that continues to this day. I had an office in Sanborn House, only a few steps from the Baker Library, and remember going into the manuscripts room only a couple of weeks after my arrival. I asked the man at the desk what was there, and he mentioned some notebooks and letters belonging to Frost, who had once studied at Dartmouth. He took them out for me to examine, and my journey with Frost began in earnest.
There were many people in the area who knew Frost, who had died just over a decade before. One of these was a retired Dartmouth president, John Dickey. Another was the elderly poet Richard Eberhart, who became a very close friend of mine. They introduced me to others who knew Frost, including Peter Davison – an editor and poet living in Boston. I began to accumulate material for what would become my own biography, written to some extent in response to the biography by Lawrance Thompson, a man who knew Frost well.
Thompson knew Frost a little too well, in fact. Both he and Frost were interested in Kay Morrison, who was Frost’s secretary. Thompson grew to dislike Frost, and his biography reeks of his distaste.
I loved Frost’s work --- the beautiful simplicity of the writing, the alert mind, his sense of metaphor, an ability to phrase things in memorable ways. Auden once described poetry as “memorable language,” and Frost was insanely good at finding a memorable phrase or line. Sometimes these were sentimental, of course, as in the last line of “Birches,” where he writes: “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.” Oh, dear. Nevertheless, even that sentimental poem is filled with strangeness marked by a strong Freudian undercurrent: the boy wants to “subdue” his father’s trees. There is a hidden sexual element to the poem. And some astonishing beauty: “Earth’s the right place for love.”
Frost’s ability to frame an aphorism powered his short poems, such as “Fire and Ice.” Anyone who has ever tried to write a brief, aphoristic poem will know how difficult it can be. The ancient Greek were good at it; but one doesn’t find many examples of great short aphoristic poems in English.
Frost could do anything in verse. Some of his sonnets – “Design,” “A Silken Tent” – rank easily among the best of American sonnets, or sonnets written in English. But then he could do conventional stanzas, as in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” or run at some length with blank verse: “Directive” is probably his finest achievement in this form, a late version of what the critic M.H. Abrams once characterized as the Greater Romantic Lyric, which is really a kind of ode that could be traced back to Wordsworth and Keats.
Some of Frost’s poems can hardly be classified. “After Apple-Picking” is a manner of ode, something in the vein of “Ode to Autumn” by Keats. But it defies description, and lures the reader in. It’s a stunning piece of work that is, at least partly, about writing itself.
It so happens that many of Frost’s best poems are about writing. “Hyla Brook” is a good example, a poem from Mountain Interval (1920) about a brook that has “run out of song and speed” by June. Like a poem, it persists in the author’s mind before it gets to the page. Or comes up as something else, such as “jewel-weed.” Perhaps a fragment of thought or feeling will disappear and reappear as a poem? Certainly the stream’s dry bed “is left a faded paper sheet.” My own notebooks of years past will reveal many a “faded paper sheet” that once seemed bright with lines.
I never tire of Frost. I go back to him for ideas, inspiration. I have many of his poems by heart, and only need to recall them, to say them again in my head. No need for a book.
Frost’s life was, in some ways, exemplary. He never lost interest in his work, in reading and writing. He persisted through dark years of obscurity, not publishing much until nearly his fortieth year. He dealt with family tragedies, including the early deaths of children, the later suicide of a son, an adult daughter’s death. He fought depression. He had self-doubts in abundance. He could be jealous about other poets. He craved attention.
But he persisted, and he left behind a dozen or more poems that will be read as long as poetry in English is read.
Love what you wrote here, Jay. And yes, we both taught at Middlebury in the mid eighties. Didn't know of your biography of Frost, but will now order it from Amazon.
Full time professor at Florida Atlantic University, and completing my fourth poetry book ms. Best wishes to you and yours. Susan (Mitchell).
Posted by: Susan Mitchell | September 03, 2019 at 01:20 PM