Dear Mac,

Well, some folk think it's a stunning use of the ode, or nonce form. You should get the audiotape, because Frost reads it brilliantly--blasting his way through the line endings like a fine Shakespearean actor. If you're actually interested in finding out why so many poets love Frost, that might be a good place to start.

I am nonplussed by how much effort you're spending trying to concince us that most lovers of poetry, and the best judges of it, in near total accord (Jarrel, Pinsky, Heany, Mezey, Brodsky, and some people whose names don't even end with "y"), that all off us have been suffering from a mass hallucination, which only you have escaped. And yet I imagine Frost's reputation is unscathed. I can't help but think of the gnat on the bull's horn in Aesop.

"Sorry to have burdened you, my good fellow."

"Oh, I hadn't noticed you were there."

Well...I wouldn't want anyone to change their mind...why would I?

For two decades I comforted myself: "He didn't publish After Apple Picking until he was forty." Now I'm fifty, and I haven't anything to show as good. There's a video I once saw in which William Pritchard interviews Heaney, Brodsky and Wilbur about Frost. Wilbur is sitting by his woodpile (of course) in the Berkshires, and does After Apple Picking from memory, then analyzes its miraculous heterometrical structure from memory, starting right out with the long, two-pointed ladder's hexameter. I think the woodchuck is terrific, combining as it does the folk fable of groundhog day and the old mnemonic tongue-twister. My dad thought this was Frost's greatest poem, and I rarely argued poetry with Dad.

The first time Sam Gwynn read my poem "The Path Mistaken," he said he was reminded of Frost's instep arch when he encountered my couplet "My back and shoulders recall the ache/ of hard work done for the forest's sake." Although the poem is a deliberate tribute to Frost, that connection was subconscious. But isn't that how great poems should resonate?

Getting back to The Hill Wife ...

First things first: Tim, I'm not happy that you changed my post. If you wanted to type in the whole thing, you should have done it in your own post.

I am astonished by the things that some of you have read into these poems, especially The Impulse. All of these notions are completely off the wall: that the woman is "wild", that the woman is mad, that the woman is unhappy, that the poem is about divorce, that the poem is about farm living, that the poem is about the woman or the husband, that the husband mistreats the woman, that the woman ran away, etc., etc. You are taking "reading between the lines" way beyond reason. The only person who got it right was Richard Wakefield.

Frost tells us what the poem is about: it is about an impulse -- an impulse that has an unexpected result in that it breaks the ties between the husband and wife. He doesn't explain WHY the woman doesn't comes back, and we aren't supposed to know why -- that's not the point of the poem. The point of the poem is that life isn't predictable.



[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited May 06, 2001).]

Well, yes, when one starts speculating about the nitty-gritty details of the Hill Wife's circumstances, one risks missing the "point" entirely. My own musings in that regard were intended less as an argument than as a testament to the poem's richness and layeredness; it makes a reader wonder about what might have led up to the impulse, even though a firm answer is ultimately impossible. Frost likes to leave things ambiguous, mysterious. Like the deserted hill husband himself, we are "left in the dark."

But maybe a little less in the dark. The Impulse works as a stand-alone poem (that's how I first encountered it myself, in a college anthology), but clearly Frost meant it to be read as the final poem in a multi-part series. Those other poems plant tantalizing clues; what careful reader can resist mulling them over?

I'd argue that the poem's theme is more complex than a simple statement that life isn't predictable. I'd say that the multi-part poem depicts the absolute terror that lies close beneath the surface of the predictably led life, the possibility of escaping that death-in-life through an act of human freedom, however impulsive (a nuanced word), and perhaps the rarity of such a choice -- for most of us are like the hill husband, accepting our lot, repressing the very idea of alternatives. She leaves him flat, as we said in grade school, and with a flattened affect: he does a methodical search and then stoically accepts the finality of her simple gone-ness. I see existential truths embodied by both these characters, boiling up from the page.

Frost tells us what this poem is about: it is about an impulse -- an impulse that has an unexpected result in that it breaks the ties between husband and wife. He doesn't explain WHY the women doesn't come back, and we aren't suppose to know why -- that's not the point of the poem. The point of the poem is that life isn't predictable.


Caleb,

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE!!!!!!

You seem to have difficulty understanding what people write. This is probably because you dont understand what words mean. An "Impulse" is an effect created by an originating event or events. (The heart beats, the impulse of that beating causes us to have a pulse in our wrist. We may have an impulse to fix dinner but either our own hunger or the kids coming home from school originate that impulse.) My dictionary gives as a third sense the following--"a sudden spontaneous inclination or an incitement of the mind or spirit <u>arising directly from feeling or from some outer influence</u> and prompting some unpremeditated action". An impulse is dependent on originating factors ("feeling or from some outer influence")--it is not independent. There are four poems that precede "The Impulse". Those poems lay out the originating factors that cause the girl to "implusively" leave her husband. The sudden "impulse" had been building up for a long time. What held it off for so long was her love for her husband and that she was MARRIED--which meant a great deal more back in 1915 then it means today. MARRIED women did not leave their husbands--IT WASNT DONE!!!!!


First things first: Tim, I'm not happy that you changed my post. If you wanted to type in the whole thing, you should have done it in your own post.
One thinks you are unhappy with this because including the whole poem makes it obvious you dont know what you are talking about.

I am astonished by the things that some of you have read into these poems, especially The Impulse. All of these notions are completely off the wall: that the woman is "wild", that the woman is mad, that the woman is unhappy, that the poem is about divorce, that the poem is about farm living, that the poem is about the woman or the husband, that the husband mistreats the woman, that the woman ran away, etc., etc. You are taking "reading between the lines" way beyond reason.
A number of things that you "claim" were said about this poem weren't actually said by anyone. No one said "the woman is wild" or "the woman is mad" or "that the poem is about divorce" or "that the husband mistreats the woman"---not only can't you understand Frost's words but you also demonstrate an inability to understand other people on this site. The poem is about "the woman and her husband"--"farm living"--the woman "is unhappy"--"the woman did "run away".

I repeat---WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE!!!!!

ewrgall

Kate, thank you for a well-reasoned response. You're right that terror is one of the themes of the series.

If I sounded overly emphatic in my last post, it's because so many of the interpretations sounded irrational to me. Indeed, I've read the entire series and it seems clear to me that the wife isn't unhappy in any way, and therefore wouldn't leave her husband. (Incidentally, there's no reason to assume that all 5 poems are about the same individual(s). The "hill wife" may be a composite figure, in that Frost may have been writing about a type of person rather than a particular person.)

Ewrgall, you need to double up on your therapy sessions. There's nothing in the poem to suggest that the wife ran away. Personally, I have always imaged that the wife met an untimely death and her body couldn't be found. It's clear from the poem that the wife is hiding from her husband out of play, and that she is not hiding in earnest. The fact that she has a "song on her lips" in a previous stanza indicates that she is in a light-hearted mood. A wife who is intent on escaping from her husband would not follow him into the field; she would stay in the house and make her escape from there.

There are hints in the poem that this is a young married couple, which makes it less likely that the wife would run away because of marital strife: they have no children; her behavior is casual (tossing chips and singing); and her mother is still alive and living nearby. A middle-aged wife would not be following her husband around the field -- that is something that a young, bored wife would do.

Your interpretation of this poem is nothing short of bizarre.

[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited May 07, 2001).]

She strayed so far she scarcely heard
When he called her —

And didn’t answer — didn’t speak —
Or return.
She stood, and then she ran and hid
In the fern.

He never found her, though he looked
Everywhere,
And he asked at her mother’s house
Was she there.

Sudden and swift and light as that
The ties gave,
And he learned of finalities
Besides the grave.


"and then she ran and hid
In the fern.

He never found her"

certainly sounds like someone running away. Maybe she fell down a hole or something but he never found her, She didn't come back. This still sounds to me to be basically a "woman = force of nature, man = force of reason" scenario. The suggestion is that she wasn't at her mother's house either, otherwise why does he learn of "finalities /beside the grave"? She's gone, mate. Probably into the same mythical wilderness the rest of these characters go.

Incidently, if this is from 1920ish, he would probably be familiar, via his previous friendship with Edward Thomas, of this same kind of theme in English Georgian poets of the time, such as Charlotte Mew. I don't know New England, but the landscape sounds terribly like Wessex country.

------------------
Steve Waling

She strayed so far she scarcely heard
When he called her —

And didn’t answer — didn’t speak —
Or return.
She stood, and then she ran and hid
In the fern.

He never found her, though he looked
Everywhere,
And he asked at her mother’s house
Was she there.

Sudden and swift and light as that
The ties gave,
And he learned of finalities
Besides the grave.

Caleb--you are a hopeless case.

To any others still interested.

He never found her, though he looked
everywhere,
and He asked at her mother's house
was she there

What does this actually say? He looked everywhere around his farm and couldnt find her. And he went to her mother's house and asked if she was there--What was he told at her mother's house? That she was not there or that she was there? That question is answered by what he learns--he learns of FINALITIES---NOT MORE UNCERTAINTIES about what happened to his wife but FINALITIES and he learns of FINALITIES BESIDES THE GRAVE--SHE WAS NOT DEAD BECAUSE SHE WAS AT HER MOTHER'S HOUSE!!!! The finalities that he learned was that his marriage (which was supposed to be "until death do us part") was over, that other things can be just as certain as death--THAT NO WAY UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WHATSOEVER WAS THAT GIRL GOING TO GO BACK TO THE FARM WITH HIM!

Sudden swift and as light as that the ties gave---This explains the man's point of view--to him it was sudden swift and as light as that---but in the previous four poems we have been getting the girl's point of view--that for a long time she had been living in lonilessness, boredom and fear--finally she just couldnt take it and she left. The husband, dense unfeeling oaf that he was (a typical male), was totally unaware of his wife's unhappiness.

The problem you might have in interperting this poem is that the girl disappears from the poem as well as from the farm. <u>The last two stanzas are written entirely about and from the man's point of view of the events.</u> Let me repeat that--THE LAST TWO STANZAS ARE WRITTEN FROM THE MAN'S POINT OF VIEW--<u>the girl has disappeared from the poem as well as the farm.</u> We learn what the man learned--about finalities besides death. His wife ran away to her mother's house and intended to dump him--period--end of poem.

I definately think the problem with understanding this poem comes about because people miss the complete change in perspective--that the last two stanzas tell the story from the niave husband's point of view.

ewrgall



[This message has been edited by ewrgall (edited May 07, 2001).]

Ewrgall, there is nothing in the previous poems to suggest the wife is unhappy. Fear of robbers and trees scratching at the window is part of country life; there's nothing to suggest that she wasn't willing to tolerate these things. The series isn't about the wife getting fed up and making her escape.

Let's examine the poem line by line:

It was too lonely for her there,
And too wild,
And since there were but two of them,
And no child,

And work was little in the house,
She was free,
And followed where he furrowed field,
Or felled tree.
[That she is lonely and bored doesn't suggest that she is looking to escape. Loneliness and boredom are part of life. The fact that she is voluntarily following her husband around the field suggests that she is happy in the marriage.]

She rested on a log and tossed
The fresh chips,
With a song only to herself
On her lips.
[In this stanza she's doing stuff to break her boredom -- there is still no suggestion that she is so miserable that she needs to escape. Tossing chips and singing suggest that she was in a care-free mood, not the mood of a person so unhappy that she would run away just moments later.]

And once she went to break a bough
Of black alder.
She strayed so far she scarcely heard
When he called her —
[All Frost is saying here is that she was just able to hear him. Again, the fact that she is working with her husband in the field suggests that she is happy in the marriage.]

And didn’t answer — didn’t speak —
Or return.
She stood, and then she ran and hid
In the fern.
[As I said in my previous post, everything prior to this suggests that she was in a light-hearted mood. Her hiding was a form of play -- she probably expected her husband to come looking for her.]

He never found her, though he looked
Everywhere,
And he asked at her mother’s house
Was she there.
[I don't see how you can extrapolate from this that she was still alive.]

Sudden and swift and light as that
The ties gave,
And he learned of finalities
Besides the grave.
[The "finalities" mentioned here are the finalities of permanent separation and loss. That the final two stanzas are written from the husband's point of view is irrelevant.]

In suggesting that she didn't run away, I'm not saying that she didn't perhaps run a little further as part of the game she was playing with her husband, and then meet some untimely end. Or perhaps she got lost and, for whatever reason, never made her way back to the life she was living. There's just no evidence that she ran away because she was UNHAPPY. These poems are not about marital unhappiness, or even unhappiness with her life.

[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited May 07, 2001).]