I really love this (because I love Frost), and I also think an underrated quality of his is how tricky he can be, like deliberately trying to dupe his readers (like in 'The Road Not Taken.') I'd stop short of saying he has a "mean streak," but in Frost's case I love his mean streak. I think of a poem like Mending Wall and how he saw if he were building a wall he would ask what he was walling in or walling out...and then doesn't ask that question! He knows readers will miss this and the trick is played.
I like that idea of a mean streak. That's a good way to describe it. "Evil" is wrong. "Cruel" is too far. But "mean" fits. Frost is the opposite of whatever "nice" means. :)
This is such a great essay. Some scattered thoughts:
(1) The ending of "Into My Own" immediately made me think of the ending of the Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt": "If I could start again / A million miles away / I would keep myself / I would find a way."
(2) I hadn't really thought about the pairs/opposites in Frost's poems, but the minute you made the argument I realized, yes, they're all over the place. One of his most underrated poems is "Taken Doubly: A Record Stride": https://www.poeticous.com/frost/taken-doubly-a-record-stride I love the image of two boots, one with the salt of the Atlantic on it, one with the salt of the Pacific on it.
(3) You write, "A poem is like a temporary shelter, a small structure of order in a world (and mind) of chaos." I once heard a professor argue that Dylan Thomas and Elizabeth Bishop wrote villanelles because they were alcoholics who sought the control they lacked in their own lives in such a tightly determined form.
Wow. Yes. That poem is such a great example. The two shoes are "rivals" who keep trying to surpass each other, creating a forward motion and the rhythm. They are opposites that "live together." The shoes are old but functional, ambitious, restless, and adventurous. The ego going boldly forth. It's all there--he's talking about what he's doing while he's doing it.
I really love this (because I love Frost), and I also think an underrated quality of his is how tricky he can be, like deliberately trying to dupe his readers (like in 'The Road Not Taken.') I'd stop short of saying he has a "mean streak," but in Frost's case I love his mean streak. I think of a poem like Mending Wall and how he saw if he were building a wall he would ask what he was walling in or walling out...and then doesn't ask that question! He knows readers will miss this and the trick is played.
I like that idea of a mean streak. That's a good way to describe it. "Evil" is wrong. "Cruel" is too far. But "mean" fits. Frost is the opposite of whatever "nice" means. :)
Ha! True. He is Fire and un-nice
This is such a great essay. Some scattered thoughts:
(1) The ending of "Into My Own" immediately made me think of the ending of the Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt": "If I could start again / A million miles away / I would keep myself / I would find a way."
(2) I hadn't really thought about the pairs/opposites in Frost's poems, but the minute you made the argument I realized, yes, they're all over the place. One of his most underrated poems is "Taken Doubly: A Record Stride": https://www.poeticous.com/frost/taken-doubly-a-record-stride I love the image of two boots, one with the salt of the Atlantic on it, one with the salt of the Pacific on it.
(3) You write, "A poem is like a temporary shelter, a small structure of order in a world (and mind) of chaos." I once heard a professor argue that Dylan Thomas and Elizabeth Bishop wrote villanelles because they were alcoholics who sought the control they lacked in their own lives in such a tightly determined form.
Wow. Yes. That poem is such a great example. The two shoes are "rivals" who keep trying to surpass each other, creating a forward motion and the rhythm. They are opposites that "live together." The shoes are old but functional, ambitious, restless, and adventurous. The ego going boldly forth. It's all there--he's talking about what he's doing while he's doing it.