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Re: Frost

Debbie notes:

>My next door neighbor read this poem and it struck me that it contains
many of the >lines of OTR lyrics.
>Stopping by woods on a snowy evening
>By Robert Frost

Here's the whole poem:

"Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening"

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch hsi woods fill uup with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

---------

Interesting things about Robert Frost:

He went to London when all those other American cats were going there to
try to make it in poetry.  Those other cats being: Ezra Pound, TS Eliot,
Hilda Doolittle, Amy Lowell, etc.  The high modernist kinda howlin' cat
cats.  Ezra actually launched the man's career.  He also launched TS,
Hilda, and Amy.  (Then Amy stabbed him in the back on the Imagist thing;
she swiped his movement on purpose, after he helped her settle in in
London.  The later letters from Pound to Lowell are high-larious.  He
would rite in a mawk hoozyer agcent, and call her namez.  'course he'd
a-write in that accent a lot.  But we were talking about Frost.)

He wrote in iambic pentameter all the time.  Is he, like, the last poet
to do that in the 20th c and be successful, or what?

On that note, metered verse will be coming back soon.  I can feel it in
my bones.  Free verse is a great great great great great thing, and I
love it when the writer has given thought to the rhythm.  But so much of
it just falls dead, lately, from lack of rhythmic kick, and it's giving
poetry a bad name.  That's why meter, or at least heavier rhythm, will be
back.  (Given, the Beats had their heads in the rhythm.  And that was
good, see.)

On the poem: it's so so so so tired, don't you think.  You guys ever hit
that stress point where you'd like to stop in a beautiful place and just
weep, but you can't stop for long, cos you have miles to go . . . ?  I've
heard people suggest that this is a suicidal poem.  I think they base
that on the desire to retreat into the dark and deep woods.  I can see
it.  But not.  It's not that.  He's still going.  Just weary in his
bones. 

Anybody have any insights into where RF fits in the line of American
poets?  Who's he following and who follows him?  That sort of thing? 
He's not a very good modernist.  (So certainly not a postmodernist.)  Is
he somehow a realist?  

I dunno.

I have work to do.  I must define rhetoric.  ?Heck of a way to spend an
afternoon, huh?

Fred

np: The Joshua Tree

PS:  Chris Smith, Jeni Newswanger, Laura Hoepker: what kind of plans do
you have for the 11th?  Email privately, 'k?
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