I must confess to having felt some doubt whether this new forum would interest anyone. How pleasing to check the site this morning and find such a variety of replies! I scarcely know where to begin. I'll start with Mike, I suppose, since he was the first off the mark!
Yes, the rhymes strain a bit, but surely you cannot wish for the cliche, "witches' brew." Frost has found an arresting variation. And he has not violated sense to reach for rhyme. When he invokes witches, or likens the albino flower to a froth (bubbling on the broth, no doubt), he moves the poem logically toward its conclusion. He wants to disturb the reader; the hint of strain works to further his purpose. Yet I cannot help but wonder whether he was also testing the very edge of his considerable mastery. Had he chosen some other theme, and strained so, we might deem the poem a failure.
I hope our next visitor, RCL, will post the earlier draft he speaks of. I was not aware of it.
Jerry Jenkins choses well when invokes Wilder, whose work was certainly influential during Frost's lifetime, though I suspect he is not much heeded now. I'm not in the academic field myself, but I hear alarming stories...
The similes work, yes, in their context. And so, I think, does the meter, with the possible exception of line 6, which reminds me of the nagging tetrameter, "And that has made all the difference." In "The Road Not Taken," the metrically puzzling line underscores the thorniness of the less traveled way. Here, though, I'm not so sure I can endorse "Like the ingredients of a witches' broth." I suspect Tim Murphy (aka "the meter maid") will wish to comment, but the line just doesn't work for me.
I shall return to the subject of E.A. Robinson later on.
Alan Sullivan
[This message has been edited by Alan Sullivan (edited 08-26-2000).]
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