Robert Frost, a great American writer, is renowned for his poetry. This being the case, I was a little surprised that one of my favorite parts of the Frost section was the assigned prose reading comprising his ideas about the formation of a poem. Don’t get me wrong, I think Frost’s poetry is brilliant, but I was fascinated by his description of what a poem ought to be and do. One of the most successful things about “The Figure a Poem Makes” is that, to my way of thinking, his criteria are met in many of his own poems.
In “The Figure a Poem Makes,” Frost states that a poem should be surprising while still fulfilling its subject. To be a poem, the work’s ending must be structured in a way that surprises both the writer and the reader. However, after the initial surprise, the ending must be recognizable as the only possible way the poem could have ended, given its beginning.
An example of this idea can be seen in Frost’s poem “The Wood-Pile,” in which the beginning image of the wood-pile is fulfilled by the dénouement of the poem, where we find that the wood has been left
“To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.”
The abandoned wood-pile left in the snow at the start of the poem is burning by the end, and the lines along the way flow naturally into this conclusion, describing the constant state of decay the wood-pile has been in for an uncertain length of time. The intended purpose of the wood, implied at the start of the poem, has been fulfilled by the end.
Similarly, if the title of “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” were not the same as the last line, the end would be both surprising and strangely natural. All of the golden things pictured before are short-lived: spring, flowers, leaves, Eden, dawn. Frost produces picture after picture of gold that appears for a time before eventually fading away, so we subconsciously know the final line before we read it. In this way, Frost achieves the effect he described as “an outcome that though unforeseen was predestined from the first image of the original mood.”
Frost also emphasizes his perception of the very purpose of poetry. He writes in “The Figure of a Poem” that a true poem “begins in delight and ends in wisdom.” In this way, a poem becomes a “clarification of life…a momentary stay against confusion.” In “Fire and Ice” Frost reveals one such clarification. He begins by explaining that
“Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice,”
and that since he has experienced desire, he leans towards fire. But by the end he has said that
“I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.”
This admission illuminates the devastating power of two facets of human nature—desire and hate—which are capable of destroying the world twice over, in fire and ice respectively.
Through his clarification of life, combined with the orderly development of his poetry, Frost achieves a third goal laid out in “The Figure of a Poem”: summoning from the chaos of his experience the material for his poetry. This method of drawing the order and pattern of the cosmos out of the seeming chaos of everyday life, in addition to being a clarification of life, is an affirmation of life—the pain, the beauty, and the joy of life. By writing poetry that has “run itself and carried the poet away with it,” Robert Frost invites us to be carried along as well, to be continually surprised by the wildness, the fragrance, the meaning of life.
Nicely put. I also thought that reading these essays made his purpose for writing poetry and the messages he wants to convey through them more clear. Especially since Frost is known for his way with images through words, he successfully achieves his goal by consistently following his own layout.
ReplyDeleteKelley,
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting about Frost. I was also fascinated by Frost's idea of what a poem ought to be, but your examples of how Frost really put his beliefs of poetry into practice makes me see his explanations actually applied in his poetry more clearly.
It is also interesting to note Frost's personal take on how good poetry should be written. Obviously every person and poet carries their own beliefs of what good poetry is. However, Frost's ideas of good poetry helped me think of what I view as good poetry myself. It helped me to reevaluate my own thinking on the matter.
I thought the essay on poetry has fantastic, and that many a modern poet has really forgotten much of what Frost says there. He's as concerned about beauty of language and honesty in poetry as he is about subject matter; nowadays so much poetry has fallen to the idea of agenda... it's really refreshing to read Frost's ideas and know that theory and creative excellence don't have to be mutually exclusive
ReplyDeleteKelley, I completely agree. It's refreshing that his poetry follows his own advice about a poem - an obviously, since his poetry is so well-liked, he is correct in what he writes in his prose about poetry. I really liked that you used The Wood Pile as an example. This is a poem that I've never read before, but really enjoyed it. I wasn't expecting to like it, but because Frost followed his own advice about surprise and predictability, the poem was wonderful to read.
ReplyDeleteI think the theme that we've all picked up on and liked of surprise in a poem is really central to both writing and reading. It's the conventional Hallmark-style poems that we (as English majors) often cringe at, but we also balk at some poems that have no form or function. Frost puts for this idea of surprising the reader while remaining somewhat predictable in form -- or at least understandable -- and we all resonate with this idea. I think that's something to keep in mind as we read literature of this time period and of our own as well.
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