An Exception for Edith

Since I steeled myself last night and made it through to the end of the Robert Frost collection, this will probably be the last post I write on the man's work, at least for a while. Fortunately or un-, I received no definitive revelation regarding why I just can't relate to much of the poetry. I got the feeling, though, that said alienation has more than a bit to do with the fact that Frost often relies heavily on aspects of nature for his subject matter. Try as I may (OK, not very hard) to remember the names of plants and birds, I suffer some sort of lethargy-induced mental block on the rare occasions that such a task presents itself. Don't get me wrong; watching birds-- or ants, or squirrels, or even leaves being pelted by raindrops-- is often mesmerizing, and if a thunderstorm comes through, you can forget about my doing anything but staring and listening gleefully to the fury. My best form of admiration for all of this, though, comes in silence; trying to add words to the scene seems to take the edge out of it. I certainly won't condemn others' assertions that verbal descriptions only enliven the view of a nice apple tree-- but I think in this instance, the best I can offer is "to each his/her own."

Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

What did grow stronger, though, was my conviction that Louis Untermeyer's commentary (1971) detracted from reading the actual poems-- and may have been at least partially to blame for the old-fashioned tint the collection took on. And for whatever reason, what encapsulated that feeling for me was his use of "delightful" in assigning a value to Frost's poems on insects. (p. 186; it's also used on the back cover to assert that the book makes "a delightful addition to any library.") "Delightful"? Who uses the word nowadays without a tinge of bemusement, or as a way of indicating that the object/person/activity described is nice and maybe fun, but essentially harmless and not really worthy of serious scrutiny? I would need to undertake an etymological study to find out if the term ever constituted a truly robust compliment-- but the only person I can think of who could use "delightful" and signal thereby sincere enthusiasm for whatever's being described is Edith from Downton Abbey-- and then only in her post-World-War, more-mature version. Given, Edith herself sometimes doesn't realize the full implications of her suggestions, but to the character's credit, she does seem open to thinking things through once they're pointed out to her. That subject, though, is an entirely different can of worms, further discussion of which would only make me remember how guiltily addicted I am to a highbrow soap opera.

So, then: maybe the moral of my Frost adventures is to approach an unknown work sans the assistance of well-intentioned commentary. Historical context and biographical information, yes-- but next time, I might just take the initial plunge solo.

(Re)discovering an American Icon

I've been loitering somewhere in the middle of The Road Not Taken: A Selection of Robert Frost's Poems for a solid chunk of time now. Part of that creeping pace rests upon the fact that I want to give every poem its due, instead of just devouring page after page in an effort to be finished with the thing-- but I'll also admit that I'm often not in the mood for interaction with scenes and attitudes that might only still exist in a few living memories. That second explanation, on its own, really shouldn't make any sense, especially given the fact that so much of what I love reading encapsulates times, places, and assumptions that are out of fashion, out of reach, and often, the product of an age so far gone that its practices almost seem inhuman.

But in this case, the foreignness is probably also combined with the feeling that I'm reading this volume more out of a duty to lessen my ignorance than anything else. Oh sure, I grew up hearing my mom randomly break into recitations of "The Pasture" and "The Road Not Taken," and by now, the line from "Mending Wall," "Good fences make good neighbors," has found its way into at least a portion of the aphorism-quoting public. But I never really went any deeper than that, and any time I'd hear some MFA student blow off Frost with an eye-roll and a dismissive wave of the hand, I didn't even know enough about his work to take up any sort of position vis-à-vis this posturing.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

And so, here I am, gradually reading vignettes of New England life from the last century, and finding that, yes, this is a world I can't recognize-- but also that the description of this world is sometimes striking in its insight, sometimes even deliciously eerie. And although the stereotyped gentle wife makes her appearance every now and then, there are also times when Frost gets couples' hesitant discomfort with each other, that willingness to tiptoe around our own emotional needs to keep someone else happy, or a situation balanced-- a ceremony the poet also knows eventually will be transformed or come crashing down when one person or the other lets out some sort of truth.

I'm finding that in general, then, it's not the poems so much that are sentimental, but a habitual willingness to see them as such-- in this instance, evidenced in Louis Untermeyer's commentary, which, in spite of its apparent protestations to the contrary, seems all too ready to give three cheers for a mythologized New England stolidity and its good old characters we love to talk about but really treat, from the height of our literary sophistication, in a bemused and slightly patronizing fashion. (This particular commentary also seems to be a product of its time.) It may or may not make any sense for me to speculate that Untermeyer probabaly loved Sarah Orne Jewett's stuff, but that's a question for another time, and for someone who knows much more about the man and his work than I do.

At any rate, I'm involved enough to see this book through to the end, but don't expect me to reach that point any time soon. And in case you're wondering, the next time someone gives a quick dismissal of this poet, I'll be willing to step in and offer a few rounds of "Yes, but..."