Number 57: Walt Whitman "When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer"

When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer

When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and
measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much
applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

-- Walt Whitman

Hap Notes: Let's do a little repair work for good old Walt Whitman (1819-1892). I know that the general (and probably correct) interpretation of this poem is that Walt is having a bit of trouble with science as far as "learn'd" astronomers go. He says that science is sucking all the beauty out of the stars. I have heard it disparagingly interpreted as Whitman being anti-intellectual and against scientific progress. But, what I think he's saying is that he sat through a particularly boring lecture that every body applauded because the lecturer gave out a lot of scientific "facts." You know how people love "facts."

I think Walt is just bored the way you get bored at a "power point" lecture with one too many dopey Venn diagrams about consumers rather than just going out and talking to customers. Do you think Walt would have hated listening to Carl Sagan or Richard Feynman or Brian Greene? I highly doubt it. It's the lecturer that is the problem. The speaker, as far as Whitman can tell, is not excited in the least about the subject. "Charts" and "diagrams" and "columns"! I'm bored just imagining it. How many times has a dull lecture sucked the life out of a good book or poem? Walt just heard a very poor speaker. Wish he was around today to see how heart-poundingly exciting science is now. I don't think he'd have written this particular poem today, do you? (Well, unless he had my astronomy teacher in college who ended each sentence he said with the words "in here." So he would say "You will see a slight change in the positioning of the stars out there, in here." It was quite disconcerting and hard to follow, God bless him.)

I know I'm doing a lot of projecting here but I hardly think we can hold Whitman responsible for the irritating suspicion with which many people regard the sciences. Most of those people are highly suspicious of poetry and the arts, too. Whitman plowed so much new ground that it would be ridiculous to label him as old fashioned. But perhaps his lecturer was. I rest my somewhat shaky case.

Everybody knows Whitman, if not from reading him at least by reputation. His high-flying free verse electrified poetry. He worked on his famous Leaves of Grass from its initial publication in 1855 until its publication in final form in 1889, there were six editions between those dates (if you want to see each one page by page go here: www.whitmanarchive.org/ ).He was always tinkering with it. Whitman did not create "free verse" but he was a key figure in making it incredibly popular. He's the penultimate American with his free-wheelin' style, big heart and democratic views.

Whitman started out as a printer's apprentice (they called them "printer's devils") and later was a journalist. His compassion with Civil War wounded veterans was such that he stayed and worked at the hospitals in Washington for 11 years. He struggled to make a living but spent almost all he could get on things for the soldiers he visited. Whitman's verse was thought unruly and obscene in his own lifetime but certainly influenced poets from all eras and most particularly the "Beats."

Silly side-note: I can never see the name Walt Whitman now without hearing Jon Spencer's voice singing the final verse on "Big Road," (from Extra Width) the Blues Explosion song that lists the different exits on the New Jersey Turnpike.

Here's a nice Whitman quote: "The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people."

You can find more Whitman here: www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/126

Number 56: Josephine Jacobsen "Gentle Reader

Gentle Reader

Late in the night when I should be asleep
under the city stars in a small room
I read a poet. A poet: not
A versifier. Not a hot-shot
ethic-monger, laying about
him; not a diary of lying
about in cruel cruel beds, crying.
A poet, dangerous and steep.

O God, it peels me, juices me like a press;
this poetry drinks me, eats me, gut and marrow
until I exist in its jester's sorrow,
until my juices feed a savage sight
that runs along the lines, bright
as beasts' eyes. The rubble splays to dust:
city, book, bed, leaving my ear's lust
saying like Molly, yes, yes, yes O yes.

-- Josephine Jacobsen


Hap Notes: Josephine Jacobsen (1908-2003) wrote fiction but her true love was poetry. This poem is a good illustration of that. Born in Canada she lived most of her life in Maryland. She attended no college and her first book of verse was published when she was 32. Most of her poetry was published after she was 50. She was part of no school or "set" or academic enclave or conclave. Her work is pristine and delicious. She wrote fine and thoughtful poetry criticism, too.

She was Poet Laureate (or "consultant" as they now call it and I sort of petulantly ignore from its business-like jerkiness) of the U.S from 1971-1973. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1994 and was awarded the Robert Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement in 1997. In her tenure as consultant she grieved the lack of African-American poets attending the Library of Congress events and the infrequency of their being published. She had a considerable outreach program to change that which was fairly successful.

In "Gentle Reader" she calls up Molly Bloom from James Joyce's Ulysses to describe her ecstasy at reading a poem. Here's a little piece of Molly Bloom's soliloquy:

"the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower"

Joyce has, maybe, two periods in the whole chapter in which Molly speaks, forming his own sort of prose-poem as you read it. (Breaking off briefly to say that this is the only kind of prose-poem you will read here. I don't understand the term very well because to me, there is poetic prose and there's poetry. I don't see the necessity of having another genre. I have read some wonderful prose poems, I just always lament that they didn't finish it. It's like going to a painter's house and seeing a bunch of primed canvases with a pencil sketches on them- you can see it's going to be an interesting painting. But why won't he/she finish it? If you want to sketch on canvas, that's fine but it isn't called a painting, is it? A prose poem is a prose sketch, isn't it? How is it a poem? Just musing....)

Much of Jacobsen's poetry deals with the experience of being human and the natural world.

Here's a good Jacobsen quote: "I don't really value very highly statements from a poet in regard to her work. I can perhaps best introduce my own poetry by saying what I have not done, rather than defining what I have done. I have not involved my work with any clique, school, or other group: I have tried not to force any poem into an overall concept of how I write poetry when it should be left to create organically its own individual style; I have not been content to repeat what I have already accomplished or to establish any stance which would limit the flexibility of discovery. I have not confused technical innovation, however desirable, with poetic originality or intensity. I have not utilized poetry as a social or political lever. I have not conceded that any subject matter, any vocabulary, any approach, or any form is in itself necessarily unsuitable to the uses of poetry. I have not tried to establish a reputation on any grounds but those of my poetry."

You can find more Jacobsen here: www.mezzocammin.com/iambic.php?vol=2007&iss=2&cat=poetry&page=jacobsen

Number 55: Shel Silverstein "Forgotten Language"

Forgotten Language

Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly
in my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers. . . .
How did it go?
How did it go?

-- Shel Silverstein

Hap Notes: Shel Silverstein (1930-1999) was an extraordinary talent. He was an artist, a writer, a poet and a musician. He wrote popular songs and extraordinary children's books. He was a man who genuinely enjoyed life. Most people know him as the author of The Giving Tree, a book that is so fundamental to grade schools and counselor's offices that it's hard to imagine when it wasn't around.

As a songwriter he wrote "The Unicorn," the staple of the Irish Rovers. He wrote songs that permeated (and still do) the radio like "Sylvia's Mother" and "The Cover of the Rolling Stone" and "Put Another Log on the Fire." He wrote the Johnny Cash hit "A Boy Named Sue." He wrote "I'm Checkin' Out," the song Meryl Streep sings in Postcards From the Edge. He wrote dozens more than this- I'm just throwing out a few examples.

When I was in junior high school, my geography teacher used to read to us from Silverstein's Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book, a publication decidedly not for children. We loved it. It was hilariously funny and clever. Silverstein wrote a lot of adult content being a travel journalist for Playboy magazine for many years in addition to the many cartoons he drew for them.

He was sort of all over the place, writing plays, light verse, children's books, songs and the like. One thing that permeates his work is an amused and wise positivity. He wasn't naive, far from it, he was just hopeful. It's worth noting that every once in a while some library will ban Silverstein's books because the poetry talks about things like breaking a dish instead of drying it to get out of a chore or some monster that eats children. It's always disheartening to see a library forget how smart children are.

The poem I selected is rather uncharacteristic of Silverstein in that it's rather wistful and a bit sad. My favorite poem by Silverstein when I was a kid was "A thousand hairy savages/ Sitting down to lunch/ Gobble gobble glup glup/ Munch munch munch." I almost just used that instead.

But this one always calls to me because I believe him, and I believe I (and you) used to know that language, too. As we grow older, we lose our abilities to talk about anything but "real life"- that thing everyone wants to make so dull with talk of "ramping up" and "up-sized solution-oriented initiatives" or "robust actuating infrastructures" and a "centralized global workforce." Seriously, how do people say that glop with a straight face? It's all soul-sucking utter nonsense.

I'll take the common sense of Where the Sidwalk Ends or A Light in the Attic. I'd rather be where polar bears live in your refrigerator and you need to go out with a jar and a rag and polish the stars. I've mentioned before that "children's" and "light" verse should both be genre names used with more respect. Any verses that make you smile and think are precious. We're all still children somewhere inside of us. If you've lost that then you've really forgotten an important language.

Here's a good Shel Silverstein quote: "Never explain what you do. It speaks for itself. You only muddle it by talking about it."

You can find the official website for Silverstein here: www.shelsilverstein.com/indexSite.html

Number 54: Allen Ginsburg " A Strange New Cottage in Berkley"

A Strange New Cottage in Berkeley

All afternoon cutting bramble blackberries off a tottering
brown fence
under a low branch with its rotten old apricots miscellaneous
under the leaves,
fixing the drip in the intricate gut machinery of a new toilet;
found a good coffeepot in the vines by the porch, rolled a
big tire out of the scarlet bushes, hid my marijuana;
wet the flowers, playing the sunlit water each to each,
returning for godly extra drops for the stringbeans and daisies;
three times walked round the grass and sighed absently:
my reward, when the garden fed me its plums from the
form of a small tree in the corner,
an angel thoughtful of my stomach, and my dry and love-
lorn tongue.

-- Allen Ginsburg

Hap Notes: This poem is from Ginsburg's (1928-1997) book Reality Sandwiches and it was written sometime in the late 50s. Ginsburg moved from the East coast to the San Francisco area in 1954 and the poem delights in the natural beauty he probably did not see in New York much. Even the flotsam and jetsam of the industrial society he held in contempt, a coffee pot and an old tire, seem more tolerable and gift-like. The Bay Area in the 50s is a very different place now than it was then and it certainly must have seemed more wholesome and "strange" compared to the stacks of apartment buildings and slabs of parking lots in the east. He seems almost contented and contemplative in this poem.

Ginsburg is known, of course, for his quick-witted, sexually frank, enthusiastic, and often angry verses which have spawned countless poetry throw-downs and rants. One is always glad that people have outlets to unburden their souls and give an outlet to their anger, so it's not particularly necessary to criticize poetry like this, since, if they really wanted to write poetry they would study the form more and write it less.

Ginsburg was influenced by William Carlos Williams, whom he corresponded with, and William Blake, whom he had some sort of transcendent religious experience about, and Walt Whitman, whom he read and somewhat copied. Let's not forget that Ginsburg went to Columbia University where he wrote conventional verse that won him school prizes. It was Williams who wrote a letter to poet Kenneth Rexroth, introducing Ginsburg to the San Francisco poetry scene.

Ginsburg is one of the few poets that need little introduction since his antics, readings, beliefs and poetry have been lionized and copied for the last 40 years. He started writing in an explosive time for literature and the arts, a time when industrialization seemed to be forming people into mindless automatons. (Sometimes, on darker days, it seems as though the transformation is complete, doesn't it?)

He was an avid pacifist, a practicing Buddhist and a devout admirer of much of Hindu philosophy. Much has been made of him also being an avid drug user (mostly LSD and weed.) He felt they brought people to a deeper understanding of themselves and God. Early proponents of drug use, like Ginsburg and Timothy Leary, were under the impression that drugs would make people more conscious and spiritual. One doesn't know how to comment on this except to say that our contemporary drug problem is more a symptom of a greater societal problem than anything else. This is not what the "Beats" had in mind with their espousal of drugs. They didn't want to cause more misery, they were looking for enlightenment. Unfortunately, drugs turned out to be another band-aid to patch over the yearning soul. Until we repair the way we treat and educate people, we can look forward to drugs and alcohol to always be the duct-tape that will do a portion of the patching up on some people. (Oops- I wandered away from Ginsburg- sorry.)

Ginsburg and his confreres (Jack Keroac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, Phillip Whalen, Lew Welch) were committed to free expression and freedom of speech in their work. Ginsburg helped found Beatitudes magazine, a poetry publication that gave the "Beats" their name. They were full of joyful sexuality (hetero, bi, and gay), sensual awareness and social consciousness.

Ginsburg suffers from the same trouble that Charles Bukowski suffered from i.e. when you get an adoring public forum you are allowed to do most anything you want and they will call it genius. They both sorely needed loving editors to sort out the bullshit, or at least craft it a bit. I'll point out, once again, that they wanted to be published. They thought enough of their work to want it to see permanent print. They wrote it out- it may have come spontaneously but there's a process of getting it from your head to your hand that automatically implies some thoughtfulness. Ranting and raving is what you do at your mom when you are 15. Just sayin'.

This poem isn't a rant at all, anyway. It's Ginsburg doing yard work. Enjoying a few plums. Feeling the bounty of a new place. Thinking of angels.

Here's a Ginsburg quote: "I really would like to stop working forever–never work again, never do anything like the kind of work I’m doing now–and do nothing but write poetry and have leisure to spend the day outdoors and go to museums and see friends. And I’d like to keep living with someone — maybe even a man — and explore relationships that way. And cultivate my perceptions, cultivate the visionary thing in me. Just a literary and quiet city-hermit existence."

You can find more Ginsburg here: www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/allen-ginsberg

Number 53: D.H. Lawrence "Mystic"

Mystic

They call all experience of the senses mystic, when the experience is
considered.
So an apple becomes mystic when I taste in it
the summer and the snows, the wild welter of earth
and the insistence of the sun.

All of which things I can surely taste in a good apple.
Though some apples taste preponderantly of water, wet and sour
and some of too much sun, brackish sweet
like lagoon water, that has been too much sunned.

If I say I taste these things in an apple, I am called mystic, which
means a liar.
The only way to eat an apple is to hog it down like a pig
and taste nothing
that is real.

But if I eat an apple, I like to eat it with all my senses awake.
Hogging it down I call the feeding of corpses.

--D. H. Lawrence

Hap Notes: There are so many things in contemporary culture for which David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930) is responsible it's hard to know where to start pointing. I suppose his greatest impact is how we view sex and love, although Lawrence would blanch at the casualness with which we regard these subjects when he felt they were supremely holy. Those looking for prurient titillation by reading his banned book, Lady Chatterly's Lover, are usually astonished to find out that so mild a book was ever considered pornographic, especially when every cheap pulp romance novel one can now buy at the grocery store contains more sexually explicit details.

Lawrence also had great interest in Pagan rituals, Buddhist philosophies and mysticism. He was interested in anything that evoked the sacred sensual passions. He was brought up in a mining town in Nottinghamshire in a working class family, though, and he always considered himself a Christian and was not a hedonist. The mores of the 60s were precipitated by Lawrence, hence all the literature that came from it, but he was a fairly constrained man who was trying to balance, theoretically, the sensual with the intellectual.

If nothing else, Lawrence's life and his novel Sons and Lovers is the template for the (now cliched) scenario of the intelligent working class son who doesn't want to work in the mines with his brutal blunt father. The theme has been done to death, now, but Sons and Lovers was a revelation when it was published in 1913. Lawrence is one of the first writers, also, who felt that industrial society was draining the souls of men and he rails against this often. Much of "Chatterly" is about this, as well.

Lawrence's critical work, Studies in Classic American Literature, almost single-handedly revived the reputation of Herman Melville which is why you were probably asked to read Moby Dick for some class in either high school or college. (I have rarely met anyone who has read Melville's classic, although they were certainly assigned to the task. I do wish more people would read it all the way through- it's a wonderful book.)

I actually think Lawrence's poetry comes in a poor third with his novels and critical works coming first and his poetry and travel books neck-and-neck in the third spot. One thing about Lawrence that runs through each these things, though, is his extraordinary talent for description. He understands plants, animals, histories, colors, clothing, art and architecture and describes them with loving detailed strokes.

In the poem "Mystic" Lawrence is not just showing us that his tastebuds are refined enough to tell the differences in the flavor of apples. He's using the apple (an iconic symbol of the "fall" of man) to stand for all experiences. The one great thing that comes from Eve's tasting of that apple (regardless of the arguably questionable intent of the story), is our ability to appreciate the earth we have been consigned to live upon. Lawrence's era was not so different from own our in that any sort of deviation from the status quo was looked on with suspicion. Mysticism was a flaky lie, a fake thing. No matter how open-minded we say we are currently, there is no doubt that the "mystic" experience is still regarded with some contempt. Lawrence isn't giving "foodies" more criteria for tasting things. He is telling us to taste everything with the same awareness and that awareness will bring revelations to you. He wants you to experience all of life's flavors. The experience may be transcendent for you.

My personal experience with Lawrence's books are intensely mystic in nature. I was pretty sure that he wrote Women in Love expressly for me when I first read it at 15. All of his writing speaks to me from a spiritual place that hits to my core, as if I know him somehow. While his work often has the tang of adolescent ardor and passions, he never outgrew their depths and it's hard to fault him for this when one considers what passes for passion now. Lawrence is always wrestling with the concepts of love, our animal nature and the spiritual life. He confusedly blends them into one unified theory, sort of like science trying to find a theory that will unite Einstein and particle physics. I've always been impressed with Lawrence's efforts even if I don't always appreciate his conclusions.

What is beyond all his theories is his descriptive powers which are almost incomparable. He manages to describe flowers and clothing so perfectly that you see the colors and know that they mean something- they aren't just hues, they're statements. Like the apple he's tasting in the poem. Those who say his work and experiences are a lie, just have never been to the place in the soul he is describing.

Lawrence was prone to pneumonia and eventually succumbed to tuberculosis when he was only 45. He, at that point, had been well-traveled, widely condemned and incredibly prolific. This isn't his best poem, but it certainly hints at all the troubles he'd been through in one neat little round red package.

Heres a good Lawrence quote: "Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.”

and another: “I can never decide whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts, or my thoughts the result of my dreams."

Okay, one more: “This is what I believe: That I am I. That my soul is a dark forest. That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest. That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back. That I must have the courage to let them come and go. That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women. There is my creed.”

( The graphic at the top today (1/30/11) is part of a painting done by Lawrence, who also loved to paint.)

You can find more of Lawrence's poetry here: www.poetryconnection.net/poets/D.H._Lawrence
("Snake" is too long for us to do here but I highly recommend it.)

Number 52: Mary Oliver "Wild Geese"

Wild Geese 



You do not have to be good. 

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body 

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on. 

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain 

are moving across the landscapes, 

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again. 

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

-- Mary Oliver

Hap Notes: If Mary Oliver's (born 1935) poetry is looked on as missives she is writing to us as she takes her daily walk, who, I wonder, could not see them as love letters? And who can resist falling in love with her when she courts us with such dazzling descriptions and bright pronouncements? Of course, she is not in love with us, or at least, just us, but the natural world in all its remarkable beauty and mystery. She's sending fan mail to the earth.

Nature is the muse of Oliver like art was for Rilke. Her descriptions are lush and intricate (as when she describes the features of the bird in "The Swan") and never seem overly-sentimental or trite. I tire of the observance of both the literary critics and her fans that she uses "plain speaking" and "effortless language." Get real. You try to write with "plain English" like this and see how you fare. Her words are carefully selected and juxtaposed. "Plain English" doesn't sound like this. One of the hardest things to do in poetry is to write with this kind of beauty and not come off like a Hallmark greeting card that you would send to your grandma.

The call of wild geese is exactly "harsh and exciting"-- it's very a precise and well thought description. But she's not just reeling off description, she's telling you something harsh and exciting about the natural real world we live in- the one on which we build skyscrapers and parking lots and roads. She wants to bring you back to your body on the deep good dirt of the earth. You get the bounties of the earth just because you live- you don't have to be good or repentant to get this reward. What an extraordinary thing that is. Her poetry often exclaims this in amazement. The calls of the geese are not just the vague honking of birds but a wake-up call, reminding you of who your family really is, with all its harshness, beauty and excitement. The earth is sending you a love letter, too.

And doesn't "clear pebbles of the rain" strike you (no pun intended) as a wonderful way of describing it? The earth turns while we rejoice or despair, patiently reeling out strange beauty and sometimes harsh truths. What can compare to the wonders of the earth? No video game or movie or YouTube moment is as complex.

I don't know that the Rilke comparison is always so apt for Oliver but if he'd been born just outside of Cleveland instead of Prague, who knows? Oliver went to upstate New York and worked on Edna St. Vincent Millay's papers with Millay's sister Norma. Rilke worked with Rodin. The parallels have some little merit; they both describe the world through the filter of their muse. They both come up with startling statements. And Oliver actually uses a Rilke line from his breathtaking poem "Archaic Torso of Apollo" in her poem "Invitation." You must change your life.

Oliver went for a time to both Ohio State and Vassar but took no degree. She's been a poet or writer "in-residence" at several colleges. She's won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award among many other honors. She is notoriously reticent about public appearances and prefers to let her work speak for itself. I suppose it's pretty obvious in her work, but she likes to take long walks around her home in Provincetown, MA. She calls the town a " marvelous convergence of land and water."

Here's a wonderful Oliver quote: “Whenever I would leave home, I would say ‘I’m going in. Whenever I would go back in the house, I would say ‘I’m going out.’”

You can find more Oliver here: www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Mary_Oliver

Number 51: Robert Frost "Choose Something Like A Star"

Choose Something Like a Star

O Star (the fairest one in sight), 

We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud --
It will not do to say of night, 

Since dark is what brings out your light. 

Some mystery becomes the proud.

But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn 

By heart and when alone repeat. 

Say something! And it says "I burn." 

But say with what degree of heat. 

Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade. 

Use language we can comprehend. 

Tell us what elements you blend.

It gives us strangely little aid, 

But does tell something in the end. 

And steadfast as Keats' Eremite, 

Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height, 

So when at times the mob is swayed 

To carry praise or blame too far, 

We may choose something like a star 

To stay our minds on and be staid.
-- Robert Frost

Hap Notes: Since we just had Auden's "star poem" here's Frost's take on the star, which in some ways is very similar to Auden. Except in the case of Frost, he's telling us that this distance between us and a star is what gives it the qualities we most enjoy. A case could be made like this for Auden's poem, too, really. Auden, though, is not afraid of the dark.

Frost rarely pulls his punches with his symbols, i.e. they seem to be fairly simple to sort. Light is good, dark is not-so-good (although in "Design" that's not exactly true.) That sort of thing. So people often mistakenly figure they "get" the poem. This is Frost's craftiness at its best because just "getting" the top two layers of the poem leaves the reader with the idea that Frost's simple statements are well-worn, charmingly expressed homilies. Go deeper into Frost, always, after the first few readings. He's got some time bombs in the poem and this one is no exception.

Already in the first verses we get a whiff of what's to come. "Some mystery becomes the proud," implies that the star is above us both literally and figuratively. Who else is thought to be above and over humans, we wonder. God, maybe? It's amusing to hear Frost yelling at this star- speak up, tell us something! Why will you not speak to us in language we can understand? It's frustrating. No need to point out the god-like reference there, eh?

The reference to "Keats' eremite" is to the poem "Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast" where Keats compares a star to a Christian recluse or hermit, one who has taken vows to be contemplative. Keats says in his poem that stars are steadfast, faithful, immovable.

In the end Frost says we need to choose "something" like a star to keep us steady. People need their gods-- it's good to have "something" over us to keep us on the mark. Sure, the poem says that.

But look deeper. Just for a minute. You can look away, then. Frost wants you to look away- he lets us back out of this one fact: it does tell us something by telling us nothing. Yikes! Let's go back to those first two layers quickly before we get too freaked out. Because we're just looking at this "thing" that comes out in times of darkness. We see it then only. It says nothing back to us except "I burn" and "I'm up higher than you." Hmmm, that's not much of a god, is it?

The sun is a star isn't it? Why do we not choose to stay our minds with it? Because it's not a time of darkness. We don't need it. We pick the "fairest one in site" whatever or whomever your god may be. It may be slightly difficult to understand (obscured by clouds) and that's okay. But we need its light in the darkness. Frost is sort of telling us that we choose "something" to steady us that is "above" us when we need to get away from the "sway" (not steadfast or steady) of the mob- whether they are praising or blaming. We purposefully choose an indifferent mysterious "thing" we can look on with safety. Then we can interpret this proud, burning, indifferent thing anyway we need when it's dark for us.

And it certainly doesn't say much for people who are a part of that "mob." Sometimes it's almost as if Frost is saying "Look at the shiny thing!" as though dangling a set of keys in front of a baby. Choose "something" like a star, not someONE.

And remember he says, "it will not do to say of night," i.e. how did we get to the darkness in our lives so that we needed the star? Why are we in the dark-- so that we will go to the star? Kinda sadistic, ain't it?

Once, again. Not much of a god. You can go back to the top two layers of this poem, if you like. It's still a very good poem that way.

Always good to remember that Frost said he had a "lover's quarrel" with the world. Feel a little better now? He's a lover.

Here's where we've talked about Frost before if you want to review: happopoemouse.blogspot.com/2010/12/number-7-robert-frost-design_14.html