Po, I think by "fact" he means the finished task. And when I'm doing a boring, repetitive job like mowing, I recite Marvell in my head and dream of many things. But I also dream of being done and capping my satisfaction with a cold one. It's a great line. Frost has a gift for imbuing farm labor with another layer of meaning, cognition, iteration whatever. One would need to VERSED in country things Not to believe the Phoebe wept. But he's not writing about poetry, just giving us a wink and a grin in that direction. In his excellent review of my first book, Wakefield points out that verse comes from L. "versa," to turn the plough at the field's end. Nobody understood that better than RF.

Well said Tim, and that must of course be what he means by "fact"--Latin root even means "deed, done."

Mowing with Stickney:


When scythes are swishing and the mower's muscle
Spans a repeated crescent to and fro,
Or in dry stalks of corn the sickles rustle,
Tangle, detach and go,

How about that fourth line?


G

I see that people are posting their own "mowing" poems here so I thought I'd post a sonnet I wrote as a result of this thread. It wasn't in any book, and isn't likely to be, but what the heck:

MOWING


My father never let me mow the lawn.
He hired Ray Rivera for the task
who swathed concentric squares while riding on
a noisy tractor mower. If I'd ask,
and father was not near to call out No,
Ray would sometimes let me mount the throne
and chop the heads off weeds that dared to grow
as if they could exist out on their own.

But father made it clear: a King imparts
the magic nectar plants need to grow tall.
It's by the royal scepter all life starts.
No plant deserves the credit. Father, all.
I thrilled whenever Ray let me be God
wreaking judgment on my father's sod.

I'm hoping that adding this post will cause this to sort at the top of the Distinguished Guest board....

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[This message has been edited by Anne Bryant-Hamon (edited June 24, 2008).]

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[This message has been edited by Anne Bryant-Hamon (edited June 24, 2008).]

Wonderful poems, all - some well-known and loved already, some new. There's something about mowing.

I've always liked this little one by Larkin.

The Mower

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.


Philip Larkin


By the way, Tim, the title of this thread is a wonderful poem in itself: Mowing with frost, hope and steel.

This thread is from the days when I posted as "Porridgeface", a dog I involve in humorous performance poetry.

The mowing poem I wrote was this:

Regeneration

Hay ripens. I sharpen my tapering scythe blade
and grit-grate its wafer of paper-thin steel
with stone swoops; it’s hooked like a peregrine’s talon.
The snaking shaft sweeps and the first swathe is side-laid
beside me, clean slain. As I swing I can feel
the gravid field yielding. Sheaves kneel and then fall in
the breeze in formation. Their early seeds dance there
like next April’s rain-showers shining in air.
The cocksfoot and rye-grass and fescue are falling,
the rogue oats, the sedges—I harvest the field where
they shaded the clover; and none do I spare.
The sun sets on stubble where hay-stalks lie sprawling;
my father stood here in the old days like one
of the stalks that made hay as they fell in the sun.

John

John, I am just delighted that you put up your superb mowing poem. It converses on equal terms with Hope's masterpiece, and it reminds of just what a human sponge you were when you came here as Porridgeface seven years ago, the palpable excitement that Alan and I felt as we watched you absorb and master new influences, new measures, to give expression to your life, which Antaeus-like is so fimly rooted in the soil. May our summer of discussing Frost and others provoke another poem as good as this!

I'm also delighted that Anne recalled to our attention Richard's fine mowing poem, which like Mike Todd's on the Open Mic thread, engages so directly with For Once Then, Something. It also alludes to other Frost poems, like Two Tramps in Mudtime, and does so not ostentatiously but artlessly.