I get a daily poem in my email from Poetryfoundation.org. Today’s is by a younger Robert Frost before he became the scary old man of American arts and letters. No, really. If you thought that “The Road Not Taken” was truly suitable for commencement addresses, then you need to dig down into its cruft. Not that nice. I know he must have laughed at the thought that others considered it an ‘optimistic’ poem. In truth it is a devastating one about death and despair. But not this poem, not “October”–I don’ think.
I was struck by the heartbeat of the iambics in it-lubDUB, lubDUB, ad heart-finitum. I wanted to read more and connect more with the poem and I wanted to connect the poem to the world it describes, my world on the farm here in Kentucky in October.
I want to have a date with October today starting with Frost’s poem.
So many approaches, many of them redundant, but in the good way that the walnut tree makes more nuts than the squirrels can ever remember to eat.
This post will be a work in progress as I have lots of little micro dates with October the poem, October the month, October the place. I will return as I add links to this post. Consider them as reports from along the edges, the hedgerows, the bramble tangles, the fallen leaves, the wool and warp and weft of October’s loom and shuttle.
For example, I could go the annotation way:
Diigo
Hypothesis
Genius
NowComment
Or invite others to go the Hackpad route? This is a collaborative path that converges or diverges as much as anyone could wish. Create your own adventure, mild or wild.
Or I could go with a Storify slideshow?
Or maybe Z33ga?
Or Pocket? (The mobile version will read it back to you.)
Or Soundcloud? (Perhaps you would like to read the poem to us and I could put it here or on Hackpad or make a playlist there.)
Many stances. Some analytic. Some juxtaposing. Some emotional. Some analogical. So many stances to choose from, but all arising from the passion that arises from getting to know someone or something more closely.
Perhaps a Youtube feldgang and a Vialogue annotation?
What am I hoping for, what do I expect on this date with October? What is my null hypothesis? Where will this take me?
I know not.
&
that is OK.
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I learned the word “cruft” from this post.
I love the idea of “mini-dates.” But I can’t stand Frost. I feel that he’s poetry’s Sam Adams (the beer, not the historical figure). What if I did a parallel make, and threw some Berryman at you later this month? Or perhaps I could re-read The Fall in the fall? I was just thinking yesterday about how it’s oddly appropriate that while one of my favorite bands is named for a book by one of my favorite writers, it’s the book that I understood the least.
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This is not a particularly good Frost. He suffers from overexposure to be sure, but I think you would be remiss to dismiss him entirely. He is a consummate craftsman. The lines below ring so true from my lived experience surrounded by thousands of trees. In fact this time of year as trees drop their leaves, Frost is botanically correct. Largely, leaves don’t get blown off, the trees push them off with something called an abscission layer. One of the most extraordinary sounds that I have ever heard is the sound of the leaf being cut from the tree. It makes a clear sharp ‘tick’ like the mechanism in a clock. And you can only hear it if is totally still air, no wind and no noise. He is very careful when he writes these lines and the rhythm reminds me of this ticking noise.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
It is a crap poem in lots of ways, mist and amethyst, really, but that is no worse than any of the cruft that passes for craft in most rap. Frost got better. He wrote this in 1915. While not young (forty I think), he was still learning his craft and doing stuff in his poems like the line above that pointed to better days ahead. And…there are way worse things than being the Sam Adams of poetry, yes? You could be Kanye rhyming “coke lines” and “four times”. Talk about crass commercial craptacularity.
I would love some Berryman. Or something you read with your students that could serve double duty. Sorry, hope I didn’t push back too much, but there is value even in the bad stuff.