America's Great Poet of Darkness: A Reconsideration of Robert Frost at 150

[FergusArgyll]

> Frost is the darkest of poets

Interesting, I always thought of him as quite optimistic. Maybe because my introduction to him was

  The way a crow
  Shook down on me
  The dust of snow
  From a hemlock tree

  Has given my heart
  A change of mood
  And saved some part
  Of a day I had rued.

it goes well with Monet's The Magpie and hot coffee

[PyWoody]

'Out, Out--'

  The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
  And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
  Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
  And from there those that lifted eyes could count
  Five mountain ranges one behind the other
  Under the sunset far into Vermont.
  And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
  As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
  And nothing happened: day was all but done.
  Call it a day, I wish they might have said
  To please the boy by giving him the half hour
  That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
  His sister stood beside him in her apron
  To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw,
  As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
  Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
  He must have given the hand. However it was,
  Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
  The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
  As he swung toward them holding up the hand
  Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
  The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
  Since he was old enough to know, big boy
  Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—
  He saw all spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off—
  The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’
  So. But the hand was gone already.
  The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
  He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
  And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
  No one believed. They listened at his heart.
  Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
  No more to build on there. And they, since they
  Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

or

'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.

are both pretty dark, off the top of my head. He has a number of poems that are more subtle and dig away at you in the best possible way.

[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

Frost's poetry is famously ambiguous. Even his most famous poem, which people usually assume is about the positive attributes of a life of nonconformity, can be read from the opposite perspective:

> Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

> I took the one less traveled by,

> And that has made all the difference

Note he doesn't state whether the difference was positive or negative.

We put ourselves into the poetry, and much of his work can indeed be quite dark when read from a certain place.

[temp0826]

Considering symbolism of hemlock and of the crow? It's hard to say at one glance, it could be taken with some heck of a lot darker implications.

Then again, "rued" may have an extra meaning too (rue = ruta graveolens = "herb of grace").

Great poem nonetheless :).

[imjonse]

More than optimistic, I found it funny. Then I realized I misread crow as cow.

[alephknoll]

> Maybe because my introduction to him was

Would've thought most would view it as dark and melancholy and resigned. You get optimism from those lines?

Do you feel the following is optimistic?

'...

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.'

In some sense, I guess it can be viewed as optimistic. In the way 'death cures all' can be viewed as optimistic. Just never thought of it that way. Interesting.

[dev_tty01]

Hmm. I think that can be read different ways. He had a dark foreboding for the day and the crow encounter only saved a part of the day. Rather than optimistic, it could be perceived as still able recognize a small bit of light through his darkness. That's what great about art. The perception and situation of the viewer shapes the experience.

[QuercusMax]

One of my favorites is Birches. He does talk about wanting to leave the earth and then come back.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44260/birches

[Amorymeltzer]

To put a title to it, that's Dust of Snow

[ajkjk]

I dunno anything about poetry but the meter of that poem bugs me. Why not "from hemlock tree"? there are like random extra syllables.

[ksenzee]

> two parallel but separate levels: one, the corncob bard of Yankee wisdom who appears on t-shirts and mugs: the other, the critic’s darling who is “bleak, dark, complex, and manipulative.”

This is the genius of Frost. You can read Fire and Ice in elementary school, when you're just figuring out what a poet is, and you get it. Then you can read him again in college and see a whole new level underneath what you thought you understood. Both levels are there on purpose. Both are valid.

[Amorymeltzer]

A couple of years ago I read through his complete works. Highly recommend doing so, but I will say that, unlike with many (most?) other poets, I found that the Robert Frost poems you already know--Mending Wall, The Road Not Taken, Fire and Ice, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening--are indeed his best. There are plenty of other good ones and some truly great lines as well, but it was oddly reassuring to find out.

[ghaff]

It's interesting how the meaning of "The Road Not Taken" seems to have widely(?) come to have been differently interpreted over the years. I had a long-ago English professor talk about that and I think it was a fairly non-mainstream optinion at the time. (He taught an American literature in the 20s course in the 80s.) It seems to be sort of the standard interpretation today--perhaps the view of Frost generally has shifted.

[rwbt]

It is probably the most misunderstood poem of all time! There's no going back now though.

[antiterra]

I think “Nothing Gold Can Stay” fits the mold. It’s a heartbreaking poem of beautiful construction and depth that is dismissed because it has been heavily cited by popular culture. It doesn’t help that what it has to say, at first glance, appears to be cut short by its title:

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Early versions of the poem show meandering sequential steps of revision that suddenly give way to a less intuitive flourish that anchors it.

This contains the best description of the revisions I have found online- https://poemshape.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/the-making-of-rob...

[jaybrendansmith]

When thinking of Frost's darkness, this poem springs to mind as bleak:

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth-- Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches' broth-- A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall?-- If design govern in a thing so small.

[sammnaser]

Who is the audience for this article? Anyone who has read Frost's body of work understands there is a plaintive, wistful, and dark nature to his poetry. The article even goes so far as to invoke the classic high-school, "guys, The Road Less Traveled might actually be a sad poem!" discussion as though it's an interesting or novel point and not the whole reason that one gets taught so widely. Seems like the author is arguing with an imaginary, naive general public here, which I don't think is useful or interesting. I have to say this is a pretty embarrassing attempt at analyzing Frost.

[velcrovan]

Underappreciated, I think: The Tuft of Flowers

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44275/the-tuft-of-flo...

[madmountaingoat]

While there's certainly darkness here it clearly shows Frost was not all doom and gloom. Even a very cynical reading would be hard pressed to discount the positivity of the small act and the feelings of connection it engendered.

[olvy0]

I really enjoyed that essay.

The last paragraph seems to sum up my view of the world.

In school when learning Stopping By Woods I'm pretty sure the death/suicide interpretation was mentioned by my teacher, and seemed pretty obvious to me even before she mentioned it.

[greenie_beans]

i enjoyed this, learning more about him and thinking about his writing in this way. i've been getting into frost after moving to new england.

[isolatedsystem]

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

Frost is incomparable.