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12-04-2021, 06:14 PM
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: North Carolina
Posts: 6,238
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Do you find this boring? Graves was never this sublime or profound. Maybe Hardy--and the influence is obvious--but not Graves.
Come In
As I came to the edge of the woods,
Thrush music — hark!
Now if it was dusk outside,
Inside it was dark.
Too dark in the woods for a bird
By sleight of wing
To better its perch for the night,
Though it still could sing.
The last of the light of the sun
That had died in the west
Still lived for one song more
In a thrush's breast.
Far in the pillared dark
Thrush music went —
Almost like a call to come in
To the dark and lament.
But no, I was out for stars;
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked;
And I hadn't been.
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12-05-2021, 09:55 AM
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Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Brooklyn, NY USA
Posts: 6,119
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I think my problem with Frost is partly his frequent choice of subject matter.
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12-06-2021, 02:04 PM
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Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Brooklyn, NY USA
Posts: 6,119
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So if we can travel on our mustaches and hair, why are so many young American males shaving their heads? It's a plot.
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12-08-2021, 08:31 AM
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Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Chicago
Posts: 220
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In one of his great essays on Frost, the poet-critic Randall Jarrell said that a third of the poems can be read with at least a measure of appreciation, a third could be tossed out completely, and the rest should be recognized as the dark masterpieces they are. The darkness inherent in his best poems belies the common image of Frost as a poet of simple, homespun wisdom.
These lines from the "The Oven Bird" have stayed with me for 50 years:
The oven bird would be as other birds
Except he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
The same with these lines from "Provide, Provide":
No memory of having starred
Atones for later disregard
Or keeps the end from being hard.
Incidentally, Brad Leithauser, a notable poet-critic himself who judged one of last year's contests for Able Muse, wrote the introduction to the indispensable "No Other Book," a collection of Jarrell's finest essays.
Last edited by Tim McGrath; 12-09-2021 at 01:43 PM.
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12-08-2021, 12:12 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 6,761
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In “Robert Frost: The Way to the Poem” (1958), John Ciardi also noted the dark Dantean tone in Frost, “Stopping by Woods” a strong example.
__________________
Ralph
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12-09-2021, 07:48 AM
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Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Brooklyn, NY USA
Posts: 6,119
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Quite possibly I far over-rated Graves. I still don’t like Robert Frost. I have tried. Something in me almost always doesn’t like a Frost poem.
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12-10-2021, 02:11 PM
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Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Chicago
Posts: 220
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As for "The Raven," I hope that my ear is never so refined that it can fail to be ravished by such a line as this:
"And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain"
Poe was another great poet-critic. In our own day, William Logan writes penetrating essays about the worth, or rather the worthlessness, of much of modern poetry.
Last edited by Tim McGrath; 12-11-2021 at 05:08 AM.
Reason: needed work
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