Poembuster

Analyses of the masters and their works

Desert Where Frost Is

Saturday, February 28, 2009

During my short stint with Poembusters, we tackled "Desert Places" by Robert Frost. It's one of his better poems, yet I did not even know about it until this Poembusters session.

Indeed, this poem was a big inspiration when I wrote The Many Goodbyes.

Last night the sky dumped a good amount of snow on the ground, and so staying home from work because school is out can have its advantages. I decided to re-read "Desert Places", perhaps subconsciously, because snow is a character in the poem (I had forgotten this).

For anyone who knows Frost, some basic characteristics of his poetry in general is they are nature poems written in Iambic Pentameter, often blank verse. This small poem Iambic (short LONG) Pentameter, though it is hard to tell at first. The poem throws a lot of surprise punches. Let's start with the first verse.

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 is little mystery in this stanza. The beauty in this stanza is the language. There is alliteration(falling fast field), and repetition (falling falling) (fast fast) that combine for a double punch. Frost is gently pounding away his imagery just like snow falls in a big storm. Of course, the rhyming meter helps to control the poem, the feeling he will experience in the following stanzas. The stanza uses a lot of metrical substitutions, but what you need to decide when scanning a poem for meter is what the majority of feet are within the poem as a whole; this helps to identify the substitutions.

"but a FEW WEEDS in STUBble GROWing FAST" does not show the true meter in the line. Neither does "SNOW FALling and NIGHT FALling FAST oh FAST". But both lines end in an Iambic foot.

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.

What do the woods around the field have? This is the first punch we don't see coming. Whatever "it" is, appears to affect the animals too -- why else would they be smothered in their lairs? Snow can smother, but snow doesn't fall in lairs. But Frost as narrator admits his absent-mindedness at what he is looking at and doesn't see that he isn't an observer. He isn't in the movie theater -- he is in the movie. And with this understanding, we now can understand what the "it" is -- loneliness. The field feels it, the wood feels it, the animals feel it, Frost feels it.

We wait until the last line of the second verse before we get a complete line using Iambic Pentameter: "the LONEliNESS inCLUDES me UNaWARES". This line needs a special punch, and we get it with a perfect Iambic Pentameter line.

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.

This stanza reveals the agent of the loneliness is the snow itself. The more snow that falls, the more lonely the place will be. And just like a blank expression does not allow anything to pass like a brick wall, the snow is one big blank expression. It reminds me of a famous argument between Van Gogh and Gaughin. They were painting a landscape together, and Van Gogh saw the sky with all its lines and curves and interesting pockets of color shades. Gaughin saw the sky as flat and uninteresting, like a plank or a sheet. And so the snow is more like what Gaughin saw, an expressionless suffocating agent.

But suddenly the poem shifts, and the wide surroundings of field and woods and sky is only a microlevel of the vast world that loneliness envelopes, especially when he acknowledges that loneliness is a frightening thing, and since it exists everywhere, nowhere is safe from it. And yet, Frost would rather be scared where he lives and knows, then be out there in the unfamiliar ground of the universe along with the other lonely objects and scared still.

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.

Labels: Desert Places, Frost

So Much Depends Upon

Thursday, February 12, 2009

I used to hate poetry. I never understood it when I read it, and so I never read it. And if I can't understand it when I read it, especially by the supposed masters, why write it?

Then I took a Modernism class in college, when one homework assignment, and the class session that followed, changed my life. It was here that I was introduced to the pure beauty of poetry, with a poem consisting of a single sentence. I have read many poems consisting of one sentence; the beauty of "The Red Wheelbarrow" written by William Carlos Williams, a minimalist poet, is in the first stanza.

So much depends
upon

The rest of the poem consists of pure imagery. Each stanza has two short lines consisting of one big image, but each line consists of a smaller image. The restof the poem follows.

...the red/wheelbarrow//glazed in rain/water//beside the white/chickens.

The professor who taught my class has a pretty unique style. At the beginning of class he would spend five or ten minutes at the board and "lecture" about the class the day before, then sit down and was silent for the entire rest of the class; indeed, the class ran the class.

To break the awkward silence that always seemed to occur after the professor sat down, I mentioned this poem. What made this a poem? And what is up with that first stanza?

I really do not have a lot to say about this poem, other than it took up an entire class time of conversation for such a small ditty. But the class in its entirety seemed to agree on two items of critique:

The first stanza makes the poem.
The other stanzas completes the poem.

Except for the first stanza, the poem is all imagery. Simple imagery. Nothing fancy. But words are still selected with care, such as "glazed". The first stanza makes the poem bigger than itself. "So much depends/upon..." Williams says everything about his subject, without revealing anything. The poem isn't about the red wheelbarrow, it is about everything it stands for.

Labels: Red Wheelbarrow, Williams

The Grave Nettle

Sunday, February 08, 2009

I do not know much about A.E. Housman's poetry, but in terms of style it appears poems like the one in this blog is typical. I read this little poem in a book by Randall Jarrell. I only remember bits and pieces of what Jarrell had to say about this little ditty, but the poem has a big punch for its size.

It consists of two simple verses. I will break them down individually.

It nods and curtseys and recovers
When the wind blows above
The nettle on the graves of lovers
That hanged themselves for love.

Okay, so this is a nature poem. The first line provides the action, but the subject is not known. But it seems we must be talking about an object ("it"), so the imagery is fabulous. What else other than people nods and curtseys?

Of course, the second line gives us an idea. A plant of some kind, most likely. But it isn't just any plant. It isn't just any flower. It is a nettle. And the nettle is on graves. Another striking image, but it doesn't even stop there. The graves are of lovers. A dancing flower on lover's graves. It sounds at once cliche and original at the same time, due to the way it was all written down and presented.

The nettle nods, the wind blows over
The man he does not move
The lover of the grave, the lover
That hanged himself for love.

Wait...what?

Okay, so the poet now presents his mastery. The poem is not a nature poem after all. The poem is not about the flower, it is about the people lying under the graves, calling special attention to one of them.

It is a love poem. But the man is not just a lover, he is a lover of the graves. He is a romantic, yes, but of the atypical kind. As Jarrell pointed out, he didn't hang himself because he loved someone in the grave and wanted to be with them, he hanged himself because he loved the grave itself. It gives a kind of Harold and Maude romanticism to it. This poem isn't cliche at all, and it is incredibly rewarding to discover this.

I also want to bring attention to the rhyme for a second.

In the first stanza, when everything seems so neat and tidy, we have a neat and tidy rhyme: above, love, lovers, love. It is all in the "of" variety. But then in the second verse, when the poem comes into being and we are taken by surprise, the rhyme to the ear is off, though to the page is the same: over, move, lover, love.

Finally, the poem is thick with consonance. The Ns, Ms, Cs, and Ls all came together for a party. Nettle nods, man not move, Curtseys recovers, lover love. And don't forget about internal rhymes such as graves/hanged.

The poem makes you want to read more A.E. Housman, doesn't it?

Labels: grave, Housman, love, nettle