FROST, "BIRCHES." Gifts, Part 3.

(Student? footnote!)


Birches by Robert Frost : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.


I realize I’ve grown tedious with analysis—in which we ANAL-eyes everything, as some students sometimes say (the ones who got Ds). But I’ve gone this far, so I’m plowing ahead. Come along if you like. There will be no sprinting.




By the way, my motives aren’t all that self-centered. It’s an old idea (and one I share) that the arts, including poetry, are legitimate new ways to perceive the world we walk through. Or, the arts are ways to “speak” in a particular manner the perceptions we’ve all had, but have not articulated to our own satisfaction. In order to talk about those arts, to get beyond “I like it,” it helps to look at details, which might require some technical thinking and language. So here’s a teaspoonful; try not to slurp.

As counterpoint to the long, prosy look and feel of the lines in “Birches,” there is the rhythm. It’s easy to overlook because we tend not to listen for it, especially in a rushing world of free verse, much of which is merely prose talking. Or yammering. Or belaboring the obvious. Or regurgitating.

Also, Frost achieves such naturalness that we might be surprised to find traditional meter. But in fact “Birches” is written in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter; two syllables of tuh-DUH, more or less, and more or less five tuh-DUHs in each line).

Iambic meter is the rhythm closest to the natural cadence of English speech; even so, it offers an understated musicality to a poem that looks and feels like prose. Or, if it does feel like poetry, we might not realize why.

The first four lines consist of perfectly regular iambs, five per line—therefore, pentameter. Now that we’ve heard that, at least subconsciously, in the very opening, Frost can stray from it occasionally if he needs to, for the sake of naturalness, or for emphasis—or to avoid a childish, sing-song, “hickory-dickory-dock” effect.



There. That’s enough of the academic biz for awhile. I hope somebody out there will comb through the poem for other gifts from Frost. Good and great poetry must offer them, whether as music, or word pictures, or depth of emotion or intellectual reasoning. But speed reading will miss too many. We don’t go to Gregorian chants because they’re zippy and easy.

I was late in arriving at respect for Frost, and one reason is that I thought he was simplistic. Now I’m sure he’s anything but, even in popularized poems like “Stopping By Woods” and “The Road Not Taken.” So I hope there will be some scouting out there—of Frost or other poets. Life is short, but the gifts are many, and poetry’s cheap. So hie thee thither and get ye to gathering. And remember, the tortoise will gather more than the hare.

Birches by Robert Frost : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

FROST, "BIRCHES," PART 2

(Any student using any of these words or ideas should be sure to footnote properly).

Birches by Robert Frost : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

These are some pics from northern Michigan, which unexpectedly cued Frost’s “Birches” for my previous post and again today. So let me comment on what I like in the poem, though it certainly has plenty of fans already.

In addition to the literal portrait of a boy swinging on birch branches, I hear Frost trying to show how we all might want to experiment with the infinite—which in the mind and spirit of the boy is the upper air where the birch branch takes him.

But note that Frost is careful to announce that he doesn't mean any kind of death wish. The speaker wants just a taste of whatever's next for humans, but he also wants to be sure he returns to earth, the right place for love.

I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return.

The poem feels somewhat long and talk-y, and I wonder if Frost considered breaking it into stanzas (or verse paragraphs, as they’re sometimes called in cases like this). White space can make writing more inviting.

That might sound simplistic, but I’ve heard a lot of intelligent readers mention how much they like dialogue in novels. White space might be only part of the explanation, but it’s a factor. (You might have noticed that I try to keep my Banjo paragraphs short if at all possible—and it usually is).

From another angle, however, the length of the lines and the argument in “Birches” also illustrate a hobbyhorse of mine for any poem: there must multiple gifts for the reader along the way. Anyone who goes slowly and reads aloud, will probably not go more than five lines without finding something unusual or appealing or rewarding.

Consider the first five lines:

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them . . .

In spite of the abundant birches in Michigan, I never noticed, or paid attention, to the way a line of birch bark sometimes crosses darker branches of other trees (or vice versa), as if the two species are in a kind of tension or conflict.

And wondering whether a swinging boy or an ice storm caused that bent branch is something I feel I should have wondered about. I’m glad Frost took care of it for me. Reminding us what we could have, or should have, noticed is often what poetry does for readers, if they open themselves to it. “You must have seen them,” Frost says. It’s as if he knows I didn’t see them. I feel gently chided by an avuncular voice and spirit.

Here are lines 6 – 10:

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells

Do you like the fancy word, “onomatopoeia,” which denotes a word that sounds like the thing it refers to? Isn’t “click” a magical example? And Frost won’t let up; we also are knocked with other “k” sounds: “many-colored, cracks, crazes, crystal.” Does anyone care to dispute that the hard “k” is a sound of vigor, if not violence? So, as pretty as the images might be in lines 6 – 10, there is also something like the sound of attack, or at least force and breakage. There is nothing gentle in the “k” sound, and that creates a kind of counterpoint to the pictorial loveliness, as if to say, "Don't get too sappy: the birches are nice to look at, but there's some upheaval and menace going on as well. There's about to be shattered glass . . . . "

In lines 6 - 10 there is also sibilance—a few “s” sounds in proximity of each other. That’s usually considered unpleasant, once again to prevent our acceptance of everything as just lovely, just lovely.

I can hear someone yelling at me for splitting hairs. Look. If I had to wake you at 5:00 a.m. for some difficult, unpleasant journey or task, should I say, “ooooohhhhhhh” (like warm, melting chocolate, maybe) or “sssssssssssss,” like a rattler about to strike.

One more thing: when you see ice-coated trees, do you think “enamel”? Me either. Don’t you think we should have? Look what we missed. That’s one more reason that he’s Frost and we’re not.

Part 2 tomorrow or soon. Hope the anticipation doesn’t keep anyone awake.

****

Frost's "Birches." SELF-ESTEEM AND LUCKY STRIKES.

Birches by Robert Frost : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

I'm back. Thanks for your patience.

Left: Two Kids in Competition. (The Checker Players, Bingham, 1850)


While visiting the town of Houghton Lake in north-central Michigan, I was parked next to an elementary school at quitting time. As they waited for their rides, one ten-year-old boy said to his buddy, “If you fist-bump me again, I’m gonna bite your face.”

But school was out and both kids needed their rides, maybe even from the same driver. They were stuck with each other. When I pulled away, The Fist-Bumper still had a face, and the two were bosom buddies, lazily shooting the bull.

When my gang was ten, playing Lucky Strike was one of our rituals. Walking around town, the first guy to spot a discarded pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes could step on it, holler “Lucky on me,” and slug the shoulder of the nearest other guy, who was expected to endure the blow without protest or tears.

Usually, the Lucky puncher gave a dramatic but half-hearted jab, partnered by a lot of shouting and editorializing about his victim's character flaws. The intent was to menace and annoy, not to inflict important pain. No one said this, but we understood it.

Occasionally, some thug-kid joined us from the margins and showed his poor breeding by lambasting the victim with an all-out roundhouse that brought tears, curses, or both. The violator would then feign innocence; he didn't know the rules, he didn't swing that hard, blah blah blah.

That might have been my introduction to a phrase I’d hear so often in life, verbatim or paraphrased or silently implied: “Not our kind of people.” These days, I use it only in order to mock it, even as I grudgingly admit its significance, see pretty clearly the dangers of any We vs. Them.

By the way, the Lucky Strike mayhem rarely happened with only a pair of kids. An audience of two or more somehow validated the tradition and bore witness. Who had quick enough feet to get to the empty Lucky pack first? And how hard was the punch to the shoulder? After all, if it was too weak, the puncher’s manhood might be in doubt. Oh, yes--and how stoically did the victim receive the blow?

So as we walked our streets and alleys, each kid was constantly on the lookout for used-up packs of Luckies. I won't speak for other towns, but that is how the Clawson males, always on the prowl, became such rotten listeners. I thought you ought to know, and those guys don't say much.

Birches by Robert Frost : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

*