[Allen Tice]

Ashamed somehow, for years I've agreed with Cameron Clark, though Stevens can be a bit too arch. As to Frost, my persistent question has always been, "What's he got that's so great?" Maybe I should think of Frost as a great performer, because I've tried and tried and more recently tried to appreciate most of his writing. Never worked. Often I've sensed condescension. Still, there he is and was at Kennedy's inauguration, why I may never know.

[James Brancheau]

Never mind. I would be interested in seeing/reading that reproduction, Sarah-Jane...

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Massive digression, but I have a friend/colleague who has a large-scale reproduction of Hughes' Crow, with Leonard Baskin's illustrations.

It's breathtaking.

I don't have any type of issue with Frost, though. I like how he gently nudges, dwells in the mundane real. In terms of poetry, I like Robert Graves much more, but that's probably because I haven't spent enough time with Frost.

(but none of them beat Remedios Varo and Hairy Locomotion)

Sarah-Jane

[Allen Tice]

For me, and despite his lacks or faults, Robert Graves is ten times the poet that Frost pretended to be. (That said, don’t go near Graves’s ideas about legend and folklore. Whew! Don’t. He’s so full of nuts.)

[Roger Slater]

Wow, I would have thought it went without saying that Frost was a great poet, and I never would have included (or even considered) Graves on a list of my ten or twenty favorite poets. Or even top fifty. "Juan at Winter Solstice" is the best Graves poem I know, and Frost has written dozens of better poems than that. IMHO.

[Jim Moonan]

I hear you Roger. I was beginning to wonder if Eratospherians were from another planet.

Allen: "Ashamed somehow, for years I've agreed with Cameron”


Cameron, are you going to let Allen dis you like that? Ha!

(And the rest of you: Are you going to keep dissing Frost?) Ha!

How masterly must you be to get a green card on this board? I don’t know how anyone wouldn’t at least acknowledge that, although he may not light your poetic fire, he was a master American poet; certainly on the “first team” of American poets (Frost, Poe, Whitman, Dickenson, Cummings, I think.)

Frost’s best poems are iconic. Especially at this time of year in New England, if you’re at all in tune with the season and the majestic beauty of the landscape, you hear Frost’s voice/sentiment everywhere. In every woodpile, in every snowy field, in every smokey chimney, in every apple orchard, in every crumbling stone wall,in every small village that dot the New England countryside. You all know the poems. I don’t have to list them.

I came across this November poem and, probably because it was a dreary late November day, it struck a chord for me in capturing the mood of deep Fall. He addresses November as Sorrow. Then he procedes to befriend it.It’s really exquisite in my book. But I am not well-read. And as I said, I was in the mood.

[Clive Watkins]

Frost seems to me indubitably a greater poet than Graves. (Yes, this view immediately raises issues of categories and definitions.) His first collection, A Boy’s Will, appeared in London in 1913. He lived a long life and over a period of perhaps thirty years produced an estimable body of work. I like to remember that he was born in 1874. He was therefore four years older than Stevens. To consider them as belonging to the same “generation” once again invites a discussion of categories and definitions. Edward Thomas, born in 1878 in Lambeth, London, might seem in terms of “generations”, close to Frost—and, as everyone interested in these matters knows, was close to Frost in rather more important ways. By contrast, Graves was born in 1895, also in London, in Wimbledon, in fact. He, too, lived a long life and went on writing verse into old age.

My father was born in 1910 (in Buckinghamshire) three years before Frost’s first book. His father was born in Wales in 1864. I was born in 1945. I mention these personal details to illustrate my sense of Frost’s place in time.

To return to my initial assertion, Frost (1874–1963) remains, for me, among the poets born in the last quarter of the nineteenth century (there or thereabouts) to whom I most often return. Others include Thomas, Stevens, Marianne Moore, T. S. Eliot, Wilfred Owen and David Jones.

Clive Watkins

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Originally Posted by James Brancheau

Never mind. I would be interested in seeing/reading that reproduction, Sarah-Jane...

You'll be lucky. It's shown rarely, and there's a story about the acquisition of it (a nice story) that comes with the show of being shown it. Hidden treasure.

But visceral, amazing, and I was transfixed in a way that I rarely am by prints ( I've worked with art and artists for so long now that reproductions have to really be special to spark that gut reaction that used to come so easily).

Sarah-Jane

[W T Clark]

I deeply appreciate Hugh's Crow. I haven't read enough of Graves. I should read more.

I can certainly tell that Frost has poetic powers. -- A good deal of poetic genius. But mostly his images and phrase-making bore me. I feel as if he made things well, while Stevens made them new.

I'll let it pass, Jim. I am the pariah of taste, sometimes, a few, against their better judgement, will shuffle to join me for a matter of seconds under my black umbrella.

Poe was one of the first poets I read, along with Browning. You really think Poe was a good poet? Most of his poems read like badly rhyming gothic clichés: "OH Lenore!" And Cummings? Far too much gimmick, his poems are weak with gimmick. And surely Whitman should be above Poe and Cummings? He is another poet who I can understand but don't personally like.

Roger, how far is the objective subjective?

Jim, taste is a vast galaxy, and our own planets orbit only distantly the same blackhole.

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Cam - I like the idea of the black umbrella - but the thing with umbrellas is that they're mostly differentiated by their handles, so I am wondering what the handle of your umbrella looks like? (go on, push the metaphor).

I promise I linked to Remedios Varo for a reason.

Look how far we can travel on our moustaches. What matters, perhaps is that we are travelling. And travelling in company where disagreement is the norm, and acceptable.

Sarah-Jane

(Poe or Lovecraft, that is another question)
(I love Whitman)