Here’s a little relief from politics and its discontents–excerpts from a discussion by Robert Frost entitled “Conversations on the Craft of Poetry” (1959).” Any aspiring poets in the crowd, please listen to a guy who knows–who really knows.
In response to the comment: “I once heard you say that for a poem to stick it must have a dramatic accent,” Frost replied:
Catchiness has a lot to do with it, all of it, all the way up from the ballads you hear on the street to the lines in Shakespeare that stay with you without your trying to remember them. I just say catchy. They stick on you like burrs thrown on you in holiday foolery. You don’t have to try to remember them….
And when people say that this will easily turn into–be set to music, I think it’s bad writing. It ought to fight being set to music, if it’s got expression in it.
And here are some comments of Frost’s that especially resonated with me. He’s describing the process of writing a poem (even Frost’s prose is poetic, isn’t it? His “voice” is instantly recognizable here as his and no other’s, like a fingerprint):
…I could define poetry this way: it is that which is lost out of both prose and verse in translation.
…I have a tune [when writing poetry], but it’s a tune of the blend of [meter and rhythm]. Something rises–it’s neither one of those things. It’s neither the meter nor the rhythm,; it’s a tune arising from the stress on those–same as your fingers on the strings, you know. The twang!
…You know, you know that, when I begin a poem I don’t know–I don’t want a poem that I can tell was written towards a good ending–one sentence, you know. That’s trickery. You’ve got to be the happy discoverer of your ends.
…I’ve often said that another definition of poetry is dawn–that it’s something dawning on you while you’re writing it. It comes off if it really dawns when the light comes at the end. And the feeling of dawn–the freshness of dawn–that you didn’t think this all out and write in prose first and than translate it into verse.
Those who follow this blog know I’ve written about Frost before, here and here in particular. Many who are familiar only with his most famous poems think he’s a sort of Hallmark Card poet. Nothing could be further from the truth.
To prove it, I’ll offer one of his darker poems today, a poem for winter. This one sure isn’t happy. But I bet that, when he finished it, he was nevertheless the “happy discoverer” of its end:
DESERT PLACES
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.
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.
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.
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.
Previously a lifelong Democrat, born in New York and living in New England, surrounded by liberals on all sides, I've found myself slowly but surely 
February 6th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
One of my favorite poemsI wish I could remember the authorgoes 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.
February 6th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Frost isnt 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 dont 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.
February 7th, 2007 at 12:50 am
Well, grackle, I bet he was pretty young when he used “ere.” He just got it in under the wire, I bet.
February 7th, 2007 at 2:29 am
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.
February 7th, 2007 at 3:37 am
Thank-you for this. My wife always asks why am I you wasting my time on political blogs?
February 7th, 2007 at 5:10 am
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.