Interesting analysis; I was also surprised reading this poem, which I didn't know although I love many of his— have you done any close reads of a poem that successfully uses form to communicate a really good idea? For Timothy Steele's book I will say that I took note of the way he acknowledged the importance of breaking the rules—once one knows the rules and can break them effectively. If I remember right, he expresses something along those lines!
I loved this bit, as it's about the universe too, and might talk back to Frost a little:
____
.... In his stimulating study, Grammatical Man, Jeremy Campbell writes:
‘Biologists as well as philosophers have suggested that the universe, and the living forms it contains, are based on chance, but not on accident. To put it another way, forces of chance and of antichance coexist in a complementary relationship.... The proper metaphor for the life process may not be a pair of rolling dice or a spinning roulette wheel, but the sentences of a language, conveying information that is partly predictable and partly unpredictable. These sentences are generated by rules which make much out of little, producing a boundless wealth of meaning from a finite store of words; they enable language to be familiar yet surprising, constrained yet unpredictable within its constraints.’
“No less than grammar does, meter fuses and enacts those principles of constancy and of change that seem essential to life and to the world about us. Like grammar, meter involves simple structures that can nevertheless be manifested in varied and complex ways. It organizes the rhythms of speech while at the same time allowing for all sorts of modulations, shadings, and surprises. And when Campbell adds that "grammatical man inhabits a grammatical universe," poets and readers of verse might speculate that we also inhabit a metrical one.”
—Timothy Steele, All the fun’s in how you say it, chapter 5
Ah yes, I just read that passage from Steele last night. Undoubtedly he will get around to discussing freedom that comes from familiarity with the rules, but I haven't gotten there yet.
I can't say I'm a big fan of his book so far, only because he seems to be invested much too heavily in this idea of the iambic foot being more prevalent than it really is, to the point of his propounding a theory of four degrees of stress simply so he can claim that spondaic and pyrrhic substitutions aren't particularly common . . . I've read Paul Fussel's book "Poetic Meter and Poetic Form" twice and prefer his analysis of poetic stress and metrical substitutions over Steele's.
Regarding your question: I haven't yet done an analysis of a poem that uses form to strengthen a good idea, but I ought to. I'll consider your comment proof that such a thing is needed in this world.
It reminds me of Whitman's "When I heard the learned astronomer." Both are in opposition to an attitude toward the natural world. I can imagine the sorts of people both Whitman and Frost have in mind. Are they exaggerating these positions. How much do they actually oppose them? It's hard to know with Frost. He's so elusive. In "Birches" he says "earth's the right place for love, I don't know where it's likely to go better," which also suggests this idea that he's interested in the here and now, the practical, the human.
Whether or not one ought to espouse such beliefs gets at what literature is for. You sound like Plato ready to kick out the poets for spreading misconceptions about the gods. I'm sympathetic to the argument, although ultimately I'd reject it because literature is not ultimately a matter of that kind of self-improvement.
That Plato comparison is entirely fair; I deserve that! I'm also similar to the evil farmer Bean from Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mister Fox, who says to his farmhand (who had just sung a delightful song praising Bean's enemy), "You've made a bad song, Petey."
In my defense, I wouldn't follow Plato and kick out the poets; I would encourage future poets not to follow the example of the ones who are making poisoned apples—while still admitting the poisoned apples' beauty. Frost's poem is quite well crafted. But I have to believe he had a purpose in writing it other than merely to show off his skill—he had to have been trying to say something; and if I'm reading him right, what he is saying is at odds with my experience of looking at the stars.
That Whitman poem is tip top. And it demonstrates the attitude I want to cultivate but often fail to deploy: Whitman doesn't scream at the astronomer to stop spouting dead analysis—he simply leaves and looks at the stars on his own. Maybe my analysis of Frost's poem is too much like screaming at him to stop. But I'm currently at work on a cycle about the constellations which incorporates an embrace of the good in Whitman's view of their worth as well as a rejection of the bad in Frost's view. It should be finished, I hope, early next year.
Have you checked out Alfred Noyes The Torchbearers? It's a three book poem, a reflection on our place in the universe. It's historical (he narrates some episodes of major figures of astronomy) and autobiographical (about his experience visiting one of those large telescopes). It's beautiful.
Noyes' name pops up in the biography of William Morris that I read earlier this year, and I'm pretty sure he was mentioned in The Sleepwalkers. Wow—I just read his wikipedia, I have got to get my hands on this guy's stuff and read it thoroughly. Torchbearers sounds like it will intersect with just about everything I've been thinking about related to astronomy in particular and science in general. I wish I'd read it a few years ago.
What if Frost is not moralizing about change, but is instead commenting on some aspect of the human experience? Perhaps you don't feel the need for shocking change in your life, but it is undeniable that some people do live and feel this way. So then the poem is not necessarily encouraging this perspective, but documenting it. It could also be the case that Frost himself usually feels the same way you do, but experienced a moment where he felt the need for some drastic change in his life. Does every poem need to moralize? You cite the Psalmist; he certainly wrote some poems that are contrary to his own typical perspective. Consider the opening of Psalm 22... does the Psalmist really believe that God has permanently forsaken him? No, he just feels that way at the moment. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't disagree with the moral component of your analysis, but I disagree with the idea that all poetry (or art, for that matter) must align clearly with a certain moral vision. Good job on the essay, and please let me know your thoughts
It's hard for me to justify those alternative readings from the poem alone; the best I can say is that Frost is claiming the constellations aren't as valuable or interesting as they could be because they have so little change about them—an assertion with which I disagree.
You've correctly pointed toward what is probably a key component of my aesthetic philosophy. I would state it like this: the BEST art is one which adheres to a certain moral vision . . . but that doesn't mean ALL art has to adhere to that vision; only that if it does, it will be better. Questions of craft and artistic ability are part of the equation, and questions of what the artist is actually saying (the moral component) are another part of the equation. The corollary is that I like a lot of art that some would call kitsch because I admire the moral component, despite the artistry not being as good as more technically skilled art.
In other words: Frost's "Constellations" is well-crafted but I don't care for the idea he is advancing. Other poems have good ideas in them but their technique is poor. Still other poems are both technically splendid and morally excellent; still other poems are neither.
When I said, at the end of the essay, that artists are obligated to tell the truth, I mean that if they don't do so their poems will not be as good as if they did. Really, I'm reacting against a kind of poetic discussion which ONLY talks about the technical elements of a poem. It's time for poetry critics to interrogate what the poems are saying as well as how they are saying it. Emily Dickinson said poets ought to "tell all the truth but tell it slant": it's easy to talk about the second half of that phrase while forgetting to talk about the first half.
Thanks for reading the essay. I'm always welcoming of any discussion or critique!
That makes sense! I suppose, then, that different people value each of those two components differently, ie. some place heavy importance on the moral aspect, and some on the technical. But certainly there needs to be some element of truth involved, or else the poem will make no sense, and no one will be able to relate to it
I propose that the poem is satirizing the position you outline, not arguing for it. Frost is saying something like: “Humans are little gremlins always hoping for things to change (preferably with an explosion), but the calm stars are an antidote to that flawed attitude.”
I don’t see anything in the text that directly supports one view or the other. But as you say, it is a clearly harmful way of looking at the world, and I can’t imagine a reasonable person advancing it.
I couldn’t count the number of times I was stumped by a text, only for a friend to say “I think he’s being funny…”
Interesting analysis; I was also surprised reading this poem, which I didn't know although I love many of his— have you done any close reads of a poem that successfully uses form to communicate a really good idea? For Timothy Steele's book I will say that I took note of the way he acknowledged the importance of breaking the rules—once one knows the rules and can break them effectively. If I remember right, he expresses something along those lines!
I loved this bit, as it's about the universe too, and might talk back to Frost a little:
____
.... In his stimulating study, Grammatical Man, Jeremy Campbell writes:
‘Biologists as well as philosophers have suggested that the universe, and the living forms it contains, are based on chance, but not on accident. To put it another way, forces of chance and of antichance coexist in a complementary relationship.... The proper metaphor for the life process may not be a pair of rolling dice or a spinning roulette wheel, but the sentences of a language, conveying information that is partly predictable and partly unpredictable. These sentences are generated by rules which make much out of little, producing a boundless wealth of meaning from a finite store of words; they enable language to be familiar yet surprising, constrained yet unpredictable within its constraints.’
“No less than grammar does, meter fuses and enacts those principles of constancy and of change that seem essential to life and to the world about us. Like grammar, meter involves simple structures that can nevertheless be manifested in varied and complex ways. It organizes the rhythms of speech while at the same time allowing for all sorts of modulations, shadings, and surprises. And when Campbell adds that "grammatical man inhabits a grammatical universe," poets and readers of verse might speculate that we also inhabit a metrical one.”
—Timothy Steele, All the fun’s in how you say it, chapter 5
Ah yes, I just read that passage from Steele last night. Undoubtedly he will get around to discussing freedom that comes from familiarity with the rules, but I haven't gotten there yet.
I can't say I'm a big fan of his book so far, only because he seems to be invested much too heavily in this idea of the iambic foot being more prevalent than it really is, to the point of his propounding a theory of four degrees of stress simply so he can claim that spondaic and pyrrhic substitutions aren't particularly common . . . I've read Paul Fussel's book "Poetic Meter and Poetic Form" twice and prefer his analysis of poetic stress and metrical substitutions over Steele's.
Regarding your question: I haven't yet done an analysis of a poem that uses form to strengthen a good idea, but I ought to. I'll consider your comment proof that such a thing is needed in this world.
It reminds me of Whitman's "When I heard the learned astronomer." Both are in opposition to an attitude toward the natural world. I can imagine the sorts of people both Whitman and Frost have in mind. Are they exaggerating these positions. How much do they actually oppose them? It's hard to know with Frost. He's so elusive. In "Birches" he says "earth's the right place for love, I don't know where it's likely to go better," which also suggests this idea that he's interested in the here and now, the practical, the human.
Whether or not one ought to espouse such beliefs gets at what literature is for. You sound like Plato ready to kick out the poets for spreading misconceptions about the gods. I'm sympathetic to the argument, although ultimately I'd reject it because literature is not ultimately a matter of that kind of self-improvement.
That Plato comparison is entirely fair; I deserve that! I'm also similar to the evil farmer Bean from Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mister Fox, who says to his farmhand (who had just sung a delightful song praising Bean's enemy), "You've made a bad song, Petey."
In my defense, I wouldn't follow Plato and kick out the poets; I would encourage future poets not to follow the example of the ones who are making poisoned apples—while still admitting the poisoned apples' beauty. Frost's poem is quite well crafted. But I have to believe he had a purpose in writing it other than merely to show off his skill—he had to have been trying to say something; and if I'm reading him right, what he is saying is at odds with my experience of looking at the stars.
That Whitman poem is tip top. And it demonstrates the attitude I want to cultivate but often fail to deploy: Whitman doesn't scream at the astronomer to stop spouting dead analysis—he simply leaves and looks at the stars on his own. Maybe my analysis of Frost's poem is too much like screaming at him to stop. But I'm currently at work on a cycle about the constellations which incorporates an embrace of the good in Whitman's view of their worth as well as a rejection of the bad in Frost's view. It should be finished, I hope, early next year.
Have you checked out Alfred Noyes The Torchbearers? It's a three book poem, a reflection on our place in the universe. It's historical (he narrates some episodes of major figures of astronomy) and autobiographical (about his experience visiting one of those large telescopes). It's beautiful.
Noyes' name pops up in the biography of William Morris that I read earlier this year, and I'm pretty sure he was mentioned in The Sleepwalkers. Wow—I just read his wikipedia, I have got to get my hands on this guy's stuff and read it thoroughly. Torchbearers sounds like it will intersect with just about everything I've been thinking about related to astronomy in particular and science in general. I wish I'd read it a few years ago.
He has an old school view on science and religion. The former deepens our understanding of the latter, instead of excluding it. It's great stuff.
What if Frost is not moralizing about change, but is instead commenting on some aspect of the human experience? Perhaps you don't feel the need for shocking change in your life, but it is undeniable that some people do live and feel this way. So then the poem is not necessarily encouraging this perspective, but documenting it. It could also be the case that Frost himself usually feels the same way you do, but experienced a moment where he felt the need for some drastic change in his life. Does every poem need to moralize? You cite the Psalmist; he certainly wrote some poems that are contrary to his own typical perspective. Consider the opening of Psalm 22... does the Psalmist really believe that God has permanently forsaken him? No, he just feels that way at the moment. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't disagree with the moral component of your analysis, but I disagree with the idea that all poetry (or art, for that matter) must align clearly with a certain moral vision. Good job on the essay, and please let me know your thoughts
It's hard for me to justify those alternative readings from the poem alone; the best I can say is that Frost is claiming the constellations aren't as valuable or interesting as they could be because they have so little change about them—an assertion with which I disagree.
You've correctly pointed toward what is probably a key component of my aesthetic philosophy. I would state it like this: the BEST art is one which adheres to a certain moral vision . . . but that doesn't mean ALL art has to adhere to that vision; only that if it does, it will be better. Questions of craft and artistic ability are part of the equation, and questions of what the artist is actually saying (the moral component) are another part of the equation. The corollary is that I like a lot of art that some would call kitsch because I admire the moral component, despite the artistry not being as good as more technically skilled art.
In other words: Frost's "Constellations" is well-crafted but I don't care for the idea he is advancing. Other poems have good ideas in them but their technique is poor. Still other poems are both technically splendid and morally excellent; still other poems are neither.
When I said, at the end of the essay, that artists are obligated to tell the truth, I mean that if they don't do so their poems will not be as good as if they did. Really, I'm reacting against a kind of poetic discussion which ONLY talks about the technical elements of a poem. It's time for poetry critics to interrogate what the poems are saying as well as how they are saying it. Emily Dickinson said poets ought to "tell all the truth but tell it slant": it's easy to talk about the second half of that phrase while forgetting to talk about the first half.
Thanks for reading the essay. I'm always welcoming of any discussion or critique!
That makes sense! I suppose, then, that different people value each of those two components differently, ie. some place heavy importance on the moral aspect, and some on the technical. But certainly there needs to be some element of truth involved, or else the poem will make no sense, and no one will be able to relate to it
Happy Thanksgiving Mr. Collen,
I propose that the poem is satirizing the position you outline, not arguing for it. Frost is saying something like: “Humans are little gremlins always hoping for things to change (preferably with an explosion), but the calm stars are an antidote to that flawed attitude.”
I don’t see anything in the text that directly supports one view or the other. But as you say, it is a clearly harmful way of looking at the world, and I can’t imagine a reasonable person advancing it.
I couldn’t count the number of times I was stumped by a text, only for a friend to say “I think he’s being funny…”