Carrol:

You're right -- Frost biographer Jay Parini says, "Robert Frost was a canny
poet, given to sly self-parody and ironic implication, full of contempt for
most of his contemporaries, and quite willing to mislead sentimental readers
into thinking that they understood his poems."

I "get" this about Frost. When I read North of Boston, many, MANY years
after I'd been a loyal subject to Cummings, I thought, "...he was way ahead
of  his time" -- putting dialog -- cuttingly believable dialog -- into
meter. It's very exciting how many layers of meaning to his poetry there
are, once you get beyond that damn pony shaking its bells in "Stopping by
Woods." (which is a very sweet poem, I think, really). Parini reveals in
Robert Frost: A Life that for decades Frost kept the source of that poem
secret. When reading his work at Bowdoin College in the late '30's, a
student asked him what made him write it. He said that he was on his way
home (to his Derry farm) after having a load of eggs rejected by the H.P.
Hood and Sons Dairy. It was Christmas time, and the money he was to get for
the eggs was meant to buy gifts for his 4 children. The reason he's glad in
the poem that the owner of the wood wasn't there to see him was that it was
there he cried, and at that moment decided to sell his farm and go back to
teaching.

Kate


----- Original Message -----
From: "Carrol Cox" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 1:36 PM
Subject: Re: Imagism and Joyce


> Kate Cone wrote:
> >
> > .... he actively
> > maintained that persona throughout his career. Essentially, he "worked"
that
> > ten years in Derry, NH as a chicken farmer/teacher/poet for the next 40
+
> > years of his life. As Parini says in Some Necessary Angels, Frost's love
for
> > the limelight did in his poetry in the end.
>
> It's been 40 years or so since I read Frost closely or in bulk, but one
> general impression at the time was that he held his readers
> (particularly those who bought the "Yankee Farmer" scam) in contempt,
> and that this showed in a number of poems in which he was virtually
> parodying his own style -- peeking around the corner of the poem as it
> were and saying, look at those fools who think this is for real. But his
> best poems are, I think, very good indeed.
>
> Carrol
>