[Rose Kelleher]

I don't know the book, but it appears to be about Frost, so, uh, I would guess he was quoting the famous Frost poem.

But I know, you're not really asking, you're making fun of my wild, crazy, wacky idea, ha ha. Robert Frost is a revered, canonized poet! He couldn't possibly have been kinky, or have indulged in a little playful innuendo. Heaven forfend.

I'm not saying he was, or that the whole poem is about that (that obviously doesn't work), but I don't see what's so inconceivable about it, either.

[Janet Kenny]

I'm afraid I haven't been able to read this whole thread although it interests me greatly. As one who feels close to the musical mind of Frost I'd like to add that I have never read any biograhical information about Frost that doesn't say he was a complex and sometimes unlikeable character. He was obviously a bit contorted psychologically and Rose's suggestion seems absolutely in keeping with the observations of those who knew him well. There is no reason why a great artist can't also be a bit screwed up. It's the unwinding into art that keeps "them" going
Janet

PS: Here are some extracts from a biography on the net. No wonder he was sometimes misunderstood:

"When he sent his poems to The Atlantic Monthly they were returned with this note: "We regret that The Atlantic has no place for your vigorous verse."
.....
After returning to the US in 1915 with his family, Frost bought a farm near Franconia, New Hampshire. When the editor of The Atlantic Monthly asked for poems, he gave the very ones that had previously been rejected......."

"In 1920 Frost purchased a farm in South Shaftsbury, Vermont, near Middlebury College where he cofounded the Bread Loaf School and Conference of English. His wife died in 1938 and he lost four of his children. Two of his daughters suffered mental breakdowns, and his son Carol, a frustrated poet and farmer, committed suicide. Frost also suffered from depression and the continual self-doubt led him to cling to the desire to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature."
......

Although Frost's works were generally praised, the lack of seriousness concerning social and political problems of the 1930s annoyed some more socially orientated critics. Later biographers have created a complex and contradictory portrait of the poet. In Lawrance Thompson's humorless, three-volume official biography (1966-1976) Frost was presented as a misanthrope, anti-intellectual, cruel, and angry man, but in Jay Parini's work (1999) he was again viewed with sympathy: ''He was a loner who liked company; a poet of isolation who sought a mass audience; a rebel who sought to fit in. Although a family man to the core, he frequently felt alienated from his wife and children and withdrew into reveries. While preferring to stay at home, he traveled more than any poet of his generation to give lectures and readings, even though he remained terrified of public speaking to the end..."

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited May 25, 2006).]

[Alan Wickes]

Hi,

I'm suprised no one has mentioned Sylvia Plath, whatever you think of her poetry in general, she certainly came up with humdinger endings....

In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises towards her like a terrible fish.

Tonight, like a shawl, the mild light enfolds her,
The shadows stoop over like guests at a christening.

The narcissi look up like children, quickly and whitely.

Talking of the end - what about sonnets? My favourite couplet is from Shakespeare's xii -

Or if they sing, tis with so dull a cheer
That leaves look pale, dreading the Winter's near.

What about your own writing - we must have some Spherean killer closes.

cheers

Alan

[Janet Kenny]

Originally posted by Marilyn Taylor:

I found myself flipping through some Robert Frost today--the semester is over and I can indulge myself-- and I re-read "Birches." It confirmed a suspicion I've harbored for a long time that I've never really articulated till now: I hate that last line. It's a very fine poem, of course-- but I honestly think that as a way to end it, one could do a whole lot better than be a swinger of birches. Way too cute for me. Strange verb usage, too.

Marilyn,
I am a fine example of someone who talked without knowing what they were talking about. I had been overwhelmed by "real life" and if I had any sense that would have made me keep my half-baked opinion to myself.

I have just actually READ "Birches" and I think it's wonderful. When I was a child there was a giant macrocarpa tree in a paddock behind our house and the thing I loved most in the world was to swing up and down--as high as I dared, on its supple branches.

I do agree with you that the last line is a sort of cop out. I don't see any connection (this time) to any strange practices. (Australians are used to the composer Percy Grainger and the idea of an artist flagellating himself is rather familiar.) But in this case I don't think any such meaning may be inferred. I think Frost just ran out of inspiration.
Janet
PS: Although, as Marilyn and Rose say, it is a very strange line. Perhaps the jury is still out?

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited May 27, 2006).]

[Marilyn Taylor]

Hello, I'm back-- after being in absentia for a few days tending to matters non-poetical. I want to quickly thank Janet, in particular, for providing those interesting and contradictory snippets about Frost as private person-- and also for backing me up on my potentially blasphemous disaproval of the ending of "Birches."

Alan, I think you're absolutely correct about Plath (who ate men like air)-- and her endings. Then there's Dorothy Parker-- "you might as well live"; and Wright's "Suddenly I realize / that if I stepped out of my body I woud break / into blossom."-- that's a brilliant break after "break", isn't it? And there are so many more! We could probably continue this thread forever, but perhaps it will behoove us to move on soon.

Marilyn

[Roger Slater]

"We could probably continue this thread forever, but perhaps it will behoove us to move on soon."

Yes, Marilyn, but how do we achieve closure?

[Marilyn Taylor]

Hee hee! Good question, Roger. How about this:

You may think that this is the end--
Well, it is!

(Note: for those of you who are blessedly unfamiliar with American pop-culture of the mid-20th century and who might be wondering what I could possibly mean by this-- I have just quoted the closing couplet from a bit of doggerel that some of us sang as kids, to the tune of John Phillip Sousa's rousing "Stars and Stripes Forever":

Be kind to your web-footed friends,
For a duck may be somebody's mother!
He sits all alone in the swamp
Where it's windy, cold and dawmp;
You may think that this is the end--
Well, it is!

Anyway, I think I'll run for closure while I'm ahead. Bye.

Marilyn

[Mary Meriam]

Marilyn, I know the thread is over - just wanted to let you know that I love the Swenson poem, Question - it's one of my all-time favorite poems. If you open a thread on Swenson, I'll be there.
Mary

[Margaret Moore]

Marilyn,

Am delighted to see that no-one has locked this thread - two pages seem short for this board - before I could put in a plea for Richard Wilbur. His endings are to my mind almost always satisfying and some are delightfully surprising. Think for instance of 'Merlin Enthralled' (won't quote to spoil the surprise for those unfamiliar with the poem) or the later and wonderfully original 'All that is', which in its closing lines returns from the seductively simple black-and-white world of crossword puzzles to the mysteries of real-life evening:

'It is a puzzle which, as puzzles do,
Dreams that there is no puzzle. It is a rite
Of finitude, a picture in whose frame
Roc, oast, and Inca decompose at once
Into the ABCs of every day.
A door is rattled shut, a deadbolt thrown.
Under some clipped euonymous, a mushroom,
Bred of an old and deep mycelium
As hidden as the webwork of the world,
Strews on the shifty night-wind, rising now,
A cast of spores as many as the stars.'

Etc, etc, etc!

Margaret



[This message has been edited by Margaret Moore (edited June 22, 2006).]

[Susan McLean]

Inspired by Sam Gwynn's cento, I decided to do one of my own, using only the last lines of famous, often-anthologized poems. I discoved that a high proportion of last lines are themselves about ending (usually death) and that they often have a "dying fall" or a grave, measured pace that gave them a kind of unity when I brought them together. (I, like Gail White, often write the last lines of a poem first, because I love that sense of completion of a line that carries a sense of having been meant to be). The lines in the cento below are not all my favorite last lines, but just lines that worked well together and were all in iambic pentameter.


Last Words: A Cento

For certain years, for certain months and days,
I measure time by how a body sways.
Everything we look upon is blest;
only we die in earnest--that's no jest.

When sleep comes down to seal the weary eyes
and gathering swallows twitter in the skies,
rage, rage against the dying of the light,
but keep that earlier, wilder image bright.

We shall go mad no doubt and die that way,
with the slow smokeless burning of decay,
the grass below--above the vaulted sky.
Last of all last words spoken is goodbye.