Number 13: William Carlos Williams "The Great Figure"

The Great Figure

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
fire truck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city

--William Carlos Williams


Hap Notes: William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) was a dynamo who was both a physician and a highly acclaimed poet. He was always listening, writing and absorbing as he made his daily rounds or house calls. He wanted poetry to change and he tried to drag it towards a more fluid, easier to understand medium. His influence, which came into play much later than he'd have liked, is huge. Almost everyone who has ever written one lick of poetry in America over the last 70 years owes him something. Not just published poets- everyone.

He is so beloved by readers of poetry that it's hard to understand how his verses could have been controversial or critically panned. Williams himself was a little overwhelmed by it. It all started when T.S. Eliot published that neutron bomb of poetry called The Waste Land. While Williams was writing imaginative, loosely structured sensory poems, Eliot had turned the poetry world on its ear by sending it to an academic appreciation of words.

I think of it as Eliot serving a complex fruit cup in a cut crystal dish composed of strange fruits that one eats with a filigreed silver spoon, while Williams, on the other hand, is serving you one perfect peach. Turns out, the critics liked the fruit cup and thought the peach was too simple (and yes, I am making a bit of a statement about Eliot's line in Prufock- "Do I dare to eat a peach?" Good call.) I love Eliot's work and I often think Williams a bit twee and/or confusing, but I'll defend to the death the theories of WCW. Williams told Allen Ginsburg that "Howl" should be cut by half. I agree. But I'm getting ahead of the story- sorry.

In the end, Williams was extraordinarily influential, even Robert Lowell, with his stiff early formality and later confessional style, said Williams had changed everything. If you've ever gone to a poetry slam or written a scrap of free verse you're working on the ground that Williams had to plow by himself for almost 20 years. Some of that ground has yielded perfect peaches and much of it has been sown with sour fruit but, there you have it. (And, to be fair, the ground that Eliot plowed yielded some pretty dull, soggy fruit cups, too.)

"The Great Figure" is an amazing amalgam of art and poetry. Williams was visiting the artist Marsden Hartley's studio when the fire truck went by and he wrote a quick poem about his impression. Later, Charles DeMuth painted "I Saw the Figure Five in Gold," based on the poem. The painting is a pretty good illustration of the poem and I often have to disentangle my love of the painting from that of the poem. (P.S. see the "Bill" in the painting? And the "Carlos?" I think there's a "WCW" in there, too.)

Surely you have been somewhere and seen something that, for a moment, made the whole world slow down. You heard no sound and just saw the object- maybe a scrolled letter on a sign or the curve of someone's wrist. That something, that object- strikes you with such momentary force that it is like your breath is taken away for a seond. In the poem, there is rain and there are lights and a firetruck and the "dark city," can't you see this, in your mind's eye, fleeting by you? And then hear the roar and the rumbling?

Here's where Williams is so brilliantly successful when he hits it right; you know the old saying "A picture paints a thousand words?" Well, Williams lets a couple dozen words paint a thousand pictures. How awesome is that? That's poetry muscle right there.

Here's a good Williams quote, he's commenting about The Waste Land: ""I felt at once that it had set me back twenty years and I'm sure it did. Critically, Eliot returned us to the classroom just at the moment when I felt we were on a point to escape to matters much closer to the essence of a new art form itself—rooted in the locality which should give it fruit."

You can find more Williams here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-carlos-williams

Number 12: Stanly Plumly "Still Missing the Jays"

Still Missing the Jays

Then this afternoon, in the anonymous
winter hedge, I saw one. I'd just climbed,
in my sixty-year-old body—with its heart
attacks, kidney stones, torn Achilles tendon,
vague promises of ulcers, various subtle,
several visible permanent scars, ghost-
gray hair, long nights and longer silences,

impotence and liver spots, evident
translucence, sometime short-term memory loss—
I'd just climbed out of the car and there
it was, eye-level, looking at me, young,
bare blue, the crest and marking jewelry
penciled in, smaller than it would be
if it lasted but large enough to show
the dark adult and make its queedle
and complaint. It seemed to wait for me,
watching in that superciliary way
birds watch too. So I took it as a sign,
part spring, part survival. I hadn't seen a jay
in years—I'd almost forgotten they existed.
Such obvious, quarrelsome, vivid birds
that turn the air around them crystalline.
Such crows, such ravens, such magpies!
Such bristling in the spyglass of the sun.
Yet this one, new in the world,
softer, plainer, curious. I tried
to match its patience, not to move,
though when it disappeared to higher ground,
I had the thought that if I opened up my hand—

---Stanley Plumly

Hap Notes: Stanley Plumly (born 1939) has a a way of discerning messages about life from the observance of the natural world in his daily life. We should probably all be doing this but not all of us should be writing poetry. Luckily, Plumly is. His style is natural but not ever datedly vernacular and is intelligent without being effete or condescending.

Plumly is Poet Laureate for the state of Maryland, he teaches English at the University of Maryland and his current book is a highly acclaimed biography of Keats, Posthumous Keats. He was born and raised in Ohio and his poetry often deals with his upbringing, his experiences as a youth, his relationship to his parents and the flora and fauna he grew up around and lives around now.

This poem reads very well on the surface, like I think a good poem should (that's just my two cents), but digging deeper will yield a few diamonds.

I think that cheeky jay stands for something- that young curious "supercilious" creature. How many of us are/were like that in our youth? Now look at the phrase "...I just climbed,/in my sixty year old body." The comma directs us to his list of aging woes but, remove the comma just for a moment. Aging often feels like you've recently climbed into a different body (oh, believe me it does!) The jay may mean, he says, survival and spring but implicit in this is youth. The poet says he'd almost forgotten about jays (the way he was when younger.) I'm not saying you can't take the phrase literally, I'm just throwing out some bread crumbs here.

He has a bright incisive way of describing the intelligent, quarrelsome Corvidae (the list of birds) family and it does seem as though a jay's cry makes the air clearer, shattering it like glass with their insistent voices. They are a marvel to look at, too. The one in the poem is large enough to show the "dark" adult but is still "softer" and "plainer." Now look at the title of the poem. Another couple of bread crumbs.

This poem is almost perfect in describing a very intimate and telling moment with nature. Haven't you ever wanted to hold your hand out to a wild bird? (And just as a trivial and silly aside; in the picture above Plumly just looks like a poet, doesn't he? Not the blue one, the black and white picture, although, now that I think on it, maybe the blue one does too.)

Heres a good Plumly quote on writing poetry: "Being able to speak with a certain amount of clarity what's in your mind and in your heart seems to me to be inseparable from having a happy life."

You can find more Plumly poetry here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/stanley-plumly

Number 11: Edna St. Vincent Millay "Recuerdo"

Recuerdo

We were very tired, we were very merry--

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable--

But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,

We lay on the hill-top underneath the moon;

And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry--

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;

And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,

From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;

And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,

And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl covered head,

And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;

And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and the pears,

And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

Hap Notes: The life of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) is a tale about what comes of being brilliant, independent minded, opinionated and pretty in an era when you could not be all of those things and be taken too seriously for too long. It's hard for me to believe that a woman who wrote the powerful sonnets of Fatal Interview is so marginalized now. I don't believe you'll read any sonnets that show an independent woman's point of view about love that are much better.

Edna was openly bisexual, a bit free and easy (which never really hurt any male poets, I'll hasten to add) and just a little drunk on fame (and sometimes booze.) She made a big splash in the world of literature with her poem "Renascence" and praise was liberally ladled out to her. She was sort of a poster-girl for the "roaring 20s" life. And, she's written more than enough junk, in addition to her gems, as, I might add, have all poets. She also won the Pulitzer Prize so put that in the balance. She was a literary celebrity for a couple of decades starting in 1917.

However, she was one of the first to see the dangers of growing fascism in Europe after WWI (for which -no kidding- she took a lot of flak) and she was a defender of the controversial anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. Her political poetry is a tad trite and histrionic, admittedly- she can get bogged down in schmaltz. Her style of poetry is thought to be a bit stylized and musty which always frustrates me because "contemporary" poetry should not be considered good, just because it's new or different, anymore than other poetry should be dismissed because it is not.

She had what should have been a very smart marriage for a writer; she had affairs all through her married life (most notably with the poet George Dillon) but she married a man who completely adored her, worshiped her talent and took care of her until the day he died. He did not subvert her will to housework when she longed to write. Unfortunately, the rest of America wasn't particularly understanding about the life of a writer, especially a very attractive female one. She was lifted high -very high- and then cast aside. She has never regained her rightful place, to my way of thinking.

Let me get down from this soapbox and talk about the poem.

Recuerdo means "I remember" and the poet is remembering being raptly in love. They travel all night on the ferry over and over. Where else were they going to go in the early 20's- even in New York? There were no all-night diners or movie theaters. If you hung around in Central Park too long you'd be arrested for vagrancy (or, if they were physical with each other- worse.) So the lovers spend all night going back and forth on the ferry in the deep of the night. The next morning they are so full of love and richness that they give their fruit and all their money to an old woman they meet on the street. They are deliriously in love.

Surely everyone has memories of seven hour phone calls, or staying up all night talking and laughing with a new love? The poem captures it perfectly with the sing-song repetition of the first two lines of each stanza- that intoxicated way you talk when you're tired but so happy. Then each stanza explains the love-fogged details of what they did with their time. It doesn't hurt to reflect that this back and forth love isn't exactly going anywhere- Millay also knew that this kind of love is wonderful but fleeting.

I've always been starry-eyed about this poem because I remember. You probably do, too. I hope you do, anyway. Everyone should be that in love at least once.

By the way, if you are a woman and a writer, she blazed that trail for you, sister. She blazed it good and hot.

Here's a good quote from Millay: "I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes."

And another: "It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it's one damn thing over and over."

You can read more of her work here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/edna-st-vincent-millay

Number 10: Frank O'Hara "Today"

Today


Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!

You really are beautiful! Pearls,

harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all

the stuff they’ve always talked about

still makes a poem a surprise!

These things are with us every day

even on beachheads and biers. They

do have meaning. They’re strong as rocks.

--Frank O'Hara


Hap Notes: Doesn't this poem make you want to run around shouting "Frogs! Rhinestones! Cherry soda! Banjos! Licorice! O Bicycles, peaches and glitter glue!" Okay, maybe it's just me that wants to do that. I'm not quite sure why O'Hara (1926-1966) picked these things but I have a few speculations.

O'Hara's writing style, as casual as it often seems, is easy to imitate but hard to equal. While he wrote personal poems, often chronicling his days, his life, his lovers, his friends, they rarely feel so personal that you can't be a part of them as you read. Sometimes reading his poetry is like talking to him on the phone, other times it's like evesdropping as he talks in his sleep or mutters to himself. I have to admit that I did not like O'Hara's poetry when I first read it, but I have fallen hopelessly in love with it as the years pass.

I am forced to (already!) take something back that I said earlier in reference to Kenneth Koch; in O'Hara's case it actually does mean something when one says that his poetry is much like abstract expressionism is in painting. Since O'Hara knew so many painters (and wrote poems about them) in his job as a writer for Art News and as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, he comes by it naturally.

This list of stuff in the poem, which first may strike you as refreshingly strange and arbitrary, is well selected. Not only does O'Hara make us appreciate these separate things in a new way by linking them up but he plays on our connotations of the words when we see them. What was the kangaroo in your mind's eye like? Were your pearls on a strand or loose? Plastic harmonica or metal? Separate white aspirin or in a bottle? He's letting the words and you do a bit of the work.

I often imagine O'Hara paging through a magazine or walking down a busy street in New York and picking these items out of ads, from book covers, articles or store windows. He's almost writing an advertisement for the words. Words that follow us to military actions (beach heads) and funerals (biers- a bier is a stand for a coffin.)

We've already illustrated how the words have meaning- think of what you saw when you read them. They really are strong as rocks- your vision of what they are is hard to change, and the phrase is almost an advertising slogan for words. "Nouns, use them all you want- they're strong as rocks! On sale now!" We appreciate that words mean something one at a time or in a list, "hard" words or easy ones, simple things and complex. And don't forget the title- Today!

I wasn't going to use this poem right away but, once I selected it, the darn thing just jumps around like trapped grasshopper until you let it out of the box. So I had to free it early.

Here's a good quote by O'Hara: "It may be that poetry makes life's nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or conversely, that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial. Or each on specific occasions, or both all the time."

You can find more of his poetry here (although we'll see him again in the course of a year): www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/frank-ohara

Number 9: George Gordon, Lord Byron: "The Destruction of Sennacharib"

The Destruction of Sennacharib

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.




Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,

That host with their banners at sunset were seen:

Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,

That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.




For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,

And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;

And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,

And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!




And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,

But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;

And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,

And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.




And there lay the rider distorted and pale,

With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:

And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,

The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.




And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,

And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;

And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,

Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!




--George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron

Hap Notes: This poem has been galloping through my head the last couple of days ever since my dear friend, Anne, said she was reading a book in which Byron (1788-1824) was a character. When this poem comes into your head, you've just got to get it out-it's compelling. There are several reasons why that happens.

Byron wrote this poem as one of a set of verses for "A Selection of Hebrew Melodies" which featured Byron's lyrics and the music of John Braham. The verses are all inspired by the Old Testament and this poem deals with the troops of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704-681 BC) who was laying siege to Judah.

According to the Bible, Sennacherib's troops were stopped from destroying Jerusalem when an angel of the Lord (Gabriel) smote them in the night. All 185,000 of 'em. Sennacherib (who wasn't even actually there- he was in Egypt or Babylon or someplace, with other troops) says that his troops had Jerusalem surrounded like "a bird in a cage". It is true, however, that his troops did not attack. Sennacherib says that Jerusalem's King Hezekiah came out and gave them a bunch of gold and silver and they left. However it was, Jerusalem was saved from destruction. Sennacherib had his own troubles. He was later murdered by his sons. One assumes there were some family problems.

One of the reasons this poem will stick with you forever (especially if you read it aloud a couple of times, which I encourage) is the galloping rhythm of the poem's meter, anapestic tetrameter (anapests are two weak beats and a strong one.) If the meter rings a bell with you, like a distant childhood memory, I'm not surprised. Dr. Seuss (aka Theodore Geisel) wrote many of his works in the meter including "Yertle the Turtle" and "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas." The meter relentlessly drags you through the poem.

Byron's colorful imagery is no slouch either, the leaves, the spears like the reflection of the stars in the sea of Galilee, the widows of the troops moaning, the silent tents, etc. etc. Byron was a huge fan of Alexander Pope and he used the rhyming couplet, as Pope did, to great effect. The Gustave Dore print, pictured above, is my favorite depiction of the scene. Sorta spooky.

Byron's life is worth a book or two and many more than that have been written about him. He was always in love and it didn't much matter whether it was man or boy or woman or girl. He was a charming and handsome devil, in spite of his club foot, and he usually got his man, or woman, or step-sister (allegedly.) When he took his place in the House of Lords he stood up for the Luddites. He was/is a national hero in Greece for his work for, and financing of, their independence from the Ottoman Empire. He wrote an Armenian dictionary. He was a larger-than-life hero/scoundrel who packed ten lives worth of living into his short 36 years. His poetic output was prolific. He sold tens of thousands of copies of his poetry in an era when that meant something (actually, now that I think on it, that means something now, too.) It's hard not to have a bit of a crush on him, in spite of his flaws which were impressive and legion.

I suppose one could say he was the "rock star" of his era but that belittles his literacy, wit and adventurousness. He pretty much exiled himself from England about eight years before his death because...well, we're not sure. It may have been his sexual appetites which England legally could punish. It may have been his debts. It may have been something else. He confided his autobiography to Thomas Moore and, a month after Byron died, Moore and Byron's publisher burned the manuscript. Hmmmm. There's no doubt Byron had some sort of hell hound on his trail, whatever it was.

He liked to be known as a man of action. He swam the Hellespont, for crying out loud! He has become mythic and, in fact, was quite so in his own time.

Here's a good Byron quote: For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction. (Yep, I believe he said it first- in his poem "Don Juan.")

Here's another: "Man is born passionate of body, but with an innate, though secret tendency, to the love of good in his main-spring of mind. But God help us all! It is at present a sad jar of atoms."

You can find more poetry by Byron here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/lord-byron

Number 8: William Stafford "Just Thinking"

Just Thinking

Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window.
No cloud, no wind. Air that flowers held
for awhile. Some dove somewhere.

Been on probation most of my life. And
the rest of my life been condemned. So these moments
count for a lot--peace, you know.

Let the bucket of memory down into the well,
bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one
stirring, no plans. Just being there.

This is what the whole thing is about.

- William Stafford





Hap Notes: William Stafford (1914-1993) was born in Kansas although he spent much of his adult life in Oregon teaching English at Lewis and Clark College. His first volume of poetry wasn't published until he was in his late 40s even though he'd been more or less writing one poem per day since the 1940s when he worked for the U.S. Forest Service as a Conscientious Objector during WWII.

His habit was to rise early (4 a.m.!) make a cup of instant coffee and a piece of toast and write until the sun came up. He wrote what he felt, what he remembered, what he saw. Stafford often came up with enchantment. His poems are organic to his thinking; they grow from his thoughts like trees or flowers. Unlike many contemporary and modern poets whose works seem willfully obscure, Stafford seems almost willfully simple.

In the poem, Stafford describes his habit of early morning writing. There's something magical about how Stafford's words (such ordinary words!) fill you with a sense of peacefulness and calm. "Some dove somewhere," like a passing thought as you listen to the morning. Don't take this casual air too lightly though. He didn't say "some crow" or "some jay" or "some cardinal" or "some hawk."

I don't want to ripple the surface of this poem much. Just let it sit with you a while. I do think that Stafford's Midwestern upbringing mixes with the Pacific Northwest in some sort of tribal alchemy, though.

William Stafford's work is something you should take in small doses. When the plain speaking starts to sound flat- stop reading it. The poems chronicle his days and a few days are magical. Put too many of them together and you start to take his simple style for granted.

You know how beautifully delicious vanilla ice cream is, all by itself, on a hot summer day? Maybe it's in a pretty cup. Maybe you're using a really great smooth silver spoon. It slips into your mouth with cool sweet wonder. You can taste that exotic vanilla bean from far-off Madagascar. You can taste the sweet complex frozen cream. Well, if you keep eating it and eating it, it gets less and less satisfying. Where's the chocolate sauce? Where's the cherry? Why aren't there any salted nuts on this? This could really use some M&M's. Reading Stafford's poetry is like that. Don't over-fill yourself or you'll lose the magical sensitive appreciation of it.

He's written a skillion (read: 67) books of poetry and prose. Don't read them all at once. It is unsurprising to know that he was a close friend and collaborator with Robert Bly. His son, Kim Stafford, is a talented poet and essayist also.

Here's a good Stafford quote: "If I am to keep writing, I cannot bother to insist on high standards.... I am following a process that leads so wildly and originally into new territory that no judgment can at the moment be made about values, significance, and so on.... I am headlong to discover."

And another: "Kids: they dance before they learn there isn't anything that isn't music. "

You can find more Stafford here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-e-stafford

Number 7: Robert Frost "Design"

Design

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.

-- Robert Frost


Hap Notes: Robert Frost (1874-1963) was a cantankerous, sad-hearted, thorny, brilliant old jester and if you've been reading him as a pleasant pastoral poet of the Northeast go no farther. I don't want to spoil your pleasure. He's possibly my favorite American poet and that's saying something.

Everything he stands for in the popular culture is wrong. He was not a native New England farmer-- he was born and raised in San Francisco, and later, in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He wasn't anywhere near a farm until he was in his late 20's. He did write many of his poems as he worked on a farm his grandpa gave him. His neighbors said that he was a terrible farmer, by the way. He was not a neat and organized man of the soil. Even in his old age, when visitors would come to his house, they would see chickens hanging around in the living room and the kitchen. So scratch that idyllic farmer guy out of your head completely.

He was a highly intelligent, wryly funny, observer of nature, however. That much is true. And he really did mend stone walls. He saw things in New England that vibrated with his soul. I'll give you that. Frost's poems are often a bit like mystic rhyming riddles and they're often about the forces of life and death.

This particular poem is a Petrarchan Sonnet and the form is important because generally they deal with love that is frustratingly unattainable. Usually the first eight lines (the octave) describe a situation and the last six (the sestet) go about trying to solve it.

So this sonnet is pretty darn scary.

First, look at the soft and lovely words he uses to describe this scene- dimpled (how cute!), innocent, heal-all, satin, froth, snow-drop and the childlike connotations of the word "kite." When he pairs them up with hard words liked "rigid" and "witches" and "dead wings" the dark words even get softened a bit- or are they darkened? He's just describing what seems like a strange coincidence. The heal-all is an anomaly (the blue flower in the picture above is a heal-all), they are normally blue. It's a plant that has been used for years to cure a variety of ailments, hence its name. He sells us on the idea that this is a very odd coincidence.

Now he goes in for the kill.

How did this happen? Is there some force at work which created this little scene? Is there some "intelligent design" behind this? Who created all this to let it happen? If it is just happenstance, what does that say about the universe? If it's something bigger, then why? If this is intelligent design- this little scene of white death- what does that say about God? Frost doesn't need to scare us with witches (who make light "broth") and Satan. He's scaring us with the question, "What kind of twisted God or universe does this?" What is this "dark design?"

And then, in the last line, he winks at us, the old goat! He backs off a little and lets us breathe. Maybe there's no design here at all. He's just askin'. But it's too late because the terrifying truth is that we don't actually know if there's a designer here or not. Both the presence and the absence of a designer in this anomalous scene are equally scary. And as for unattainable love? How does that relate to the poem?

How's that for a little "harmless'' poem about nature, eh?

Lest you think I'm making all this up I'll refer you to the critic Lionel Trilling. At Frost's 85th birthday party (in 1959- so this isn't late breaking news or anything) he stood up and said, "I have to say that my Frost...is not the Frost who reassures us by his affirmations of old virtues, simplicities, pieties and ways of feeling: anything but..I think of Robert Frost as a terrifying poet... read the poem "Design" and see if you sleep the better for it."

Frost was delighted by this. He loved Trilling's brass and said to him "You weren't there to sing 'Happy Birthday, dear Robert' and I don't mind being made controversial. No sweeter music can come down to my ears than the clash of arms over my dead body when I am down."

He wasn't crestfallen at being misunderstood and he might even have been relieved that somebody saw through the mask. Somebody got the joke, the work, the searching, lonely, scorched soul underneath the poetry.

Frost's life, by the way, was filled with heartache and tragedy. His dad died when he was 8, he had to commit his sister to a mental institution (his mother was already dead by then), he was hereditarily prone to depression and his wife suffered from it, too. They had one child die of cholera, one child who only lived three days, one child was committed to a mental institution and another child committed suicide. His wife died in 1938 so he spent almost 30 years with no partner. Only two of his six children out-lived him and one of them was in a mental health facility. He came by his wry views pretty naturally, one assumes.

You can find more Frost here, although I'm not nearly done with him for this blog, just hang onto your hat- this isn't his most terrifying poem by a long shot: /www.ketzle.com/frost/

Here's a nice Frost quote: "It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound—that he will never get over it."

And here's another: "Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?" We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections — whether from diffidence or some other instinct."