Home » Frost on poetry: “the happy discoverer of your ends”

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Frost on poetry: “the happy discoverer of your ends” — 6 Comments

  1. One of my favorite poems—I wish I could remember the author—goes like this:

    The giraffe is disappearing from the world
    without a trace.
    Who are we to say its legs are too long?
    And that it looks like a rocking chair
    running backwards in a dream?
    Think of a girl with six fingers on one of her hands.
    You must let that strange hand
    Touch you.

  2. Frost isn’t in vogue now but that will likely change. Frost committed several sins in his career. He bucked the trend away from meter and rhyme toward free form poetry and perhaps because of this was initially ignored by American publishers and had to be published in Great Britain before the American literary establishment would recognize his talent. He also had the gall to become popular(for a poet). However, his main transgression was to write poetry that is immediately accessible to the poetically uninitiated, the average reader. You don’t have to possess a Masters in literature in order to read and enjoy Frost, although his poems are certainly multi-layered. For just that reason Frost wears well; he can be profitably returned to time and time again. I have “The Poetry of Robert Frost” which is eleven of his books put together. He was among the last poets able to use “ere” and get away with it.
     

  3. Love Frost…remember Kennedy’s inaugural, when Mr. Frost was blinded
    by the sun and couldn’t read his
    poem, Dedication? He quoted an earlier poem he’d written in the 40’s,
    which was very moving. I think it was
    entitled The Gift Outright.
    Here’s one I wrote for my grandkids
    the other day:

    Terrible Twos

    You still smell new,
    and the back of your neck
    is the best place to kiss
    when I can catch you.
    You trip and bounce
    off the coffee table.
    I put ice on your head
    and wipe away your tears,
    realizing how much of God
    is still within you, and
    that the terrible twos
    is just your guardian angel
    trying to keep the world
    from getting in.

  4. In his essay, “The Figure That a Poem Makes” Frost said “A Poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.”

    Recently I’ve memorized “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and “Fire and Ice” to exercise my 60-year old brain. I think Fire and Ice is an example of a poem beginning in delight and ending in wisdom. I’ll try to write the words from memory and without reference, so it may not be completely correct:

    Some say the world will end in fire
    Some say in ice.
    From what I’ve tasted of desire
    I hold with those who favor fire.
    But if it had to perish twice
    I think I know enough of hate
    to say that ice
    is also great
    and would suffice.

    ————–

    The line breaks might not be in the right place.

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