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I came across this book review, and wondered if any here share the writer's view (of the poet, not the book), or would care to offer rebuttal/opinions. I will put some quotes, but it's too long to put it all. Warning: the page does have ads, sorry. In March 1959, at a dinner celebrating the 85th birthday of Robert Frost, the critic Lionel Trilling managed to accomplish something that few toast-masters in history have ever done: In his brief remarks, he permanently changed the way people think about his subject.
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Trilling recognized that the aged poet would not be helped in his passage to posterity by this Norman Rockwell carapace, which could only seem more fake and dated with the years. That is why Trilling insisted on calling Frost, to his face, "a terrifying poet." Really, he had less in common with Longfellow than with Sophocles, "who made plain ... the terrible things of human life."
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Yet if the "Notebooks" contain ore instead of ingots, for that very reason they seem to give us a glimpse of a more subterranean Frost. And the more private the poet, the more genuinely terrifying he becomes.
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Frost is known as a master of metaphor, and many of his poems take the form of extended metaphors. Yet when he writes, "I doubt if any thing is more related to another thing than it is to any third thing except as we make it," he shows how the power of metaphor can turn on the poet, plunging him into a world of sheer perspectivism where there is no essence, only likeness. If we can make anything resemble anything else, then we are doomed to perish from the very excess of significations.
This is the terror that has always loomed behind the willful optimism of the Emersonian tradition, and which Frost, very much like Nietzsche, was able to exhume from the corpse of Emerson's gentility. Perhaps not even Nietzsche ever captured that terror in an image as striking and bottomless as Frost's: "We get truth like a man trying to drink at a hydrant." At such moments, Frost's "Notebooks," like his best poems, remind us that there has never been a more genuinely mystical American writer. subterranean Frost
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear Jackie. I didn't dive deep into the backgrounds of Robert Frost. Like with the visual arts , I take what the artist/poet shows in image or poetry words as being more important than what his/her life and idea's are. But one clear thing that stands out from your post is that Norman Rockwell and Robert Frost are worlds apart. (sorry, I had some trouble to place the meaning of the word "carapace", so I've edited my head off). Changes made. (Norman Rockwell was a "pleasing" artist, very skilled and impressive in technique and crafty. I see Robert Frost as one who did not write to "please" or accomodate or impress people, but to get into contact with his readers on a different level. Communication with whoever is out there to see and understand. I got my little book of his poems through this board and borrowed the poem down the line since half a year to use as a signature on a small forum dealing with one special series of fantasy books. Chosen because slightly it connects to the contents of these books, but also because I think it is a special poem.  Sorry they don't have a little frost blue smile. -------------------- Fire and Ice Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favour fire. But if I had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To know that for destruction ice Is also great And will suffice. Robert Frost (1874-1963) --------------------------------------------------- I read the article though, thanks for bringing it up.
Last edited by BranShea; 02/18/07 12:05 PM.
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old hand
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I once marvelled at a painting by NZ artist Peter Mckintyre it had an eerie atmosphere of foreboding you could feel the moisture in the air. This poem of frosts give me the same feeling.
Once By The Pacific
The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God's last Put out the Light was spoken.
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addict
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It sounds to me like Lionel Trilling was indulging in imaginative criticism.
I put the following forward as a possibility, but it is not necessarily my opinion.
If it is first necessary to be familiar with Frost's private notebooks before realising that his poems were really meant to present a vertiginous vision of perspectival relativism, then the poems--taken on their own--have failed to achieve what Frost intended.
This interpretation seems especially possible when you remember that Frost was alive both before and after this astonishing hermeneutic revelation was made. In the case of a poet who died before "being discovered", this sort of conjecture is reasonable. But Frost was in a position to influence, engineer and reject the reception of his poetry and his vision. Why didn't Frost ever avail himself of the opportunity to tell his readership that he was "terrifying" ? Why had he not before strongly rejected the prevailing perception of his poetry which, if Trilling's view is correct, was incorrect?
It reminds me of people who argue over whether reading Kafka is a terrifying experience or a hoot. In the end, he is both, and neither, and more besides, and the attempt to reduce an artist to a single word is puerile.
Ergo, perhaps the most pressing question becomes not "Is Frost a terrifying poet?" but "What alcoholic drinks were served at Frost's 85th birthday?"
Last edited by Hydra; 02/19/07 05:16 AM.
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veteran
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Quote:
"... a vertiginous vision of perspectival relativism"
Yeah, as I was saying to my pal Andy as I drove his pick-up truck through a driving rainstorm to the beer store over to the nearest wet county to get a case of long-neck Buds, I said, you know, Andy, that guy Frost wrote some damn good poetry but he was unquestionably a vertiginous vision of perspectival relativism.
"Drive." said Andy, "Drive".
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Quote:
"Drive." said Andy, "Drive".
But drive slowly. Parallax will only make it worse.
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Pooh-Bah
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Frost is known as a master of metaphor, and many of his poems take the form of extended metaphors. Yet when he writes, "I doubt if any thing is more related to another thing than it is to any third thing except as we make it," he shows how the power of metaphor can turn on the poet, plunging him into a world of sheer perspectivism where there is no essence, only likeness. If we can make anything resemble anything else, then we are doomed to perish from the very excess of significations.
Jackie I don't necessarily dig Trilling's rap but I do agree that Frost was not merely the verse equivalent of Rockwell.
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Great poem, olly. Nicely constructed.
Here's Creeley's poem in toto...
A Man I Know
As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking - John, I
sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what
can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,
drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Blue laws and dry counties—just another reason not to dwell in some place.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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>>>> But Frost was in a position to influence, engineer and reject the reception of his poetry and his vision. Why didn't he ever avail himself of the opportunity to tell his readership that he was "terrifying" ? Why had he not before strongly rejected the prevailing perception of his poetry which, if Trilling's view <i>is</i> correct, was incorrect.<<<<
Second Coming to Frost .
If a poet , painter , artist in whatever field is sure (as far as that goes) of what he brings about, why would he have to explain to his public that he is 'Terrifying'?
From the article I understand that "the Notebooks " contain many random notes and I think he certainly did not write these notes for the purpose of ugrading his image.
I can agree with you that mr. Trillings may have taken the opportunity to upgrade Frost's image calling him : "terrifying" because he had come to the conclusion that Frost was.
And the "Note books"gave him the chance to do so.
Frost being present at that moment may have thought : " Amen" and
taken his drink and made a toast in his mind to his poetry, (not his purpose or person) in private.
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