One interesting side issue with "The Pasture" is how much we read a poet's poetry in light of his other poetry. I like "The Pasture" on its own merits, but I like it even more as Frost's chosen entry point to his whole body of work. One of my favorites of his, "Hyla Brook," concludes with a platitude that seems incongruous with the rest of the poem -- "We love the things we love for what they are" (a delightful example of resonating single syllables, too) -- or at least like a desperation ending. But knowing the way he likes to offer seeming platitudes that are undercut or complicated by the lines leading up to them, I contemplate the line with an open mind, trying to discover the terms upon which it can be made to harmonize with the other 13 lines. And I end up recognizing a deeper and truer meaning.
That in turn leads to another issue with Frost. When he wrote there was a huge market for nostalgic verse and fiction. Many poeple still had fairly immediate ties to the countryside, and although they didn't necessarily want to go back, they were very aware of what their new city lives had cost them. Frost cashed in on the market for nostalgia, and he was probably pretty well aware of what he was doing. But it wasn't a matter of selling out or of simplifying himself for the sake of an unsophisticated audience. His poetry grew out of rural settings; his readers found those settings appealing. But neither he nor they were unaware of the mixed feelings associated with those places. Nostalgia, yes, but not simple minded nostalgia. Unlike Jame Whitcomb Riley, say, Frost often made readers aware (if sometimes vaguely) of what a complicated business nostalgia can be. I suppose that means it isn't truly nostalgia at all.
In any case, I think part of the hostility to Frost in academic circles arose from their seeing him as a somewhat more skillful Riley, the verse equivalent of Currier and Ives. Even 25 years ago, when I was in graduate school and doing my first work on Frost, the people who were writing on Stevens and Eliot couldn't quite hide their smirks at the thought of my bothering to explicate poetry as shallow as his.
Robert, I'm not sure that Frost would have had quite the sudden (albeit late) rise he did without Pound's review, but you're certainly right that Pound got him wrong and that Frost felt wronged:
"Mr. Frost's book is a little raw, and has in it a number of infelicities; underneath them it has the tang of the New Hampshire woods, and it has just this utter sincerity."
Then on RF's second book:
"Mr. Frost's work is not 'accomplished,' but it is the work of a man who will make neither concessions nor pretences. He will perform no money-tricks. His stuff sticks in your head -- not his words, nor his phrases, nor his cadences, but his subject matter."
For my money that last last sentence sets Pound's reputation tottering.

Richard

It is churlish and unmagnanimous to deny the assistance that EP and TS gave Frost at a critical point-- they not only were invaluable in getting him received, but their encouragement may have kept Frost writing at all. For Christ's sake, Frost travelled to England to call on these guys! Would Frost have shown raw drafts of his poems to me? (Would Yeats?)

Oh bullshit, MacArthur. What exactly did Eliot
do or say that was so important? Pound's help he
could have happily done without. He did not go
to England to see them; he and Elinor went to "live
under thatch" and write. He befriended a number of
poets, Abercrombie and so on, and Edward Thomas, the
beloved friend of his life. The very most one could
say that Pound did for him was to hasten his fame a
little, a few months. Pound might have been a big
deal in London and among the cognoscenti in New York,
but he was certainly not well known in America, and
most of the thousands of readers who bought A BOY'S
WILL and NORTH OF BOSTON had never heard of him. In
any event, Frost did more for Pound (in 1958) than
Pound ever did for him. If anyone was really important
in making Frost's reputation, it was the anthologist
Louis Untermeyer.
Richard, those are all good points. Frost is full of
lines that mean a dozen things at once. Like the end
of "The Most of It" which, like "The Snow Man," ends
with a bleak and frightening line that on further
reflection comes to mean almost its opposite---"And
that was all", a stoical acknowledgement of life's
meaninglessness and the gulf between man and nature,
and at the same time, a radiant synecdoche, the
silencing response from the whirlwind (in Job).
I had forgotten that second review of Pound's---it
really is suprisingly stupid, especially coming from
a man who was often a brilliant and illuminating critic.
I suspect its blatant wrongness and incoherence was the
result of jealousy: I think Pound was more than smart
enough to see that Frost was a far better poet than
he was, especially in 1914. I'm suddenly reminded of
an academic party (at Stanford? Yale? I can't quite
remember) where Donald Justice and I, in the midst of
an idle conversation, suggested that Frost and Hardy
were much greater poets than Pound and Eliot, at which
a profound silence fell upon the assembled professors
& wives, and most of them looked at us as though we'd farted. I remember visiting Pound at St Elizabeth's
in the early 50s---I was 14 at the first visit---and
his occasional disdainful remark about Frost, and even
then, ignorant as I was and as worshipful of ol Ez, I
thought that, well, EP was officially crazy, so
not everything he said had to be taken seriously.
(And that was not the only crazy thing he said, as
I began to understand many years later.) You may
remember that when Pound was released from the asylum
and told that Frost was crucial in securing his release,
Pound said, "Well, he took his time about it." And,
as his ship left the dock in NY, bound for Italy, he
gave the Fascist salute.

In an anthology I have of Frost, there are 300 pages of essays and personal letters, and in one of them Frost describes his meeting with Pound. Right at the moment I can't find the letter, but I recall that Frost found Pound to be a forward fellow with odd ideas about prosody that he didn't agree with.

From what I know, Pound had little to do with Frost's fame. By the end of the 20's, Frost's reputation as America's greatest poet was already established, and it was based on his books (which sold very well), not on his reviews.

Frost's poetry is so transparently excellent that I don't really take seriously any negative comments about him. He continues to astound me. I'm posting one of my favorites on this board.

[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited May 01, 2001).]

Well...Pound was a screwball, that's for sure-- no argument from me, there. I don't (myself) think of him as a very successful poet-- some lovely lines...that is all. In a zany sort of way, I think EP was an inspired editor and should have settled for managing some magazine-- writing for amusement, if he wished. The history of American literature could only have been richer for it (he'd have been good at it!).
I don't think of EP as a reliable critic or theorist.

(And Caleb-- maybe I'm nuts...maybe I'm deaf, dumb and blind-- but "The Impulse" doesn't seem like a very good poem at all, to me. It looks and sounds wincingly, embarassingly bad.)



[This message has been edited by MacArthur (edited May 02, 2001).]

I'm going to answer your comment on The Impulse thread.

Richard mentioned Hyla Brook. Hasn't Frost already answered Mac's criticism in that poem? We love the things we love for what they are applies to words as well.

------------------
Svein Olav

.. another life

What is this old Frost discussion doing on
this board, suddenly front & center? Did I
miss something? Not that I'm not willing to
talk further about Frost or about some of his
inexhaustible poems, but I don't feel like
wasting any more time in his defense. He
doesn't need defending, by anybody. One may
not warm to him, may not (in Borges' phrase)
be worthy of him; but not to see his greatness
is to know very little about poetry. We don't
talk about him in connection with his various
contemporaries good or bad---Millay, Aiken,
Jeffers, W C Williams &c---but rather regard him
in the circle of his equals, Milton, Shakespear,
Herbert, Hardy &c. As someone once said about
Sandy Koufax, Frost came down to us from a higher
league.

Mea Culpa, Robert. I was reading through some old stuff, and happened to reply to this one simply because I disagreed with Mac, and because Hyla Brook strikes me as one of the more profound poems out there.

------------------
Svein Olav

.. another life