ESSAY: Textual Unity in Mountain Interval by Robert Frost

I wrote this in Uni ages ago for a 4th Year half-credit course on Robert Frost's poetry and it was interesting to reread. If you want to go into the weeds a bit on his third poetry collection, Mountain Interval, feel free. It's a bit long, 7,000 words or so. I thought it was pretty good.

Cheers, Jake

 

IN EXAMINING ROBERT FROST’S THIRD BOOK OF POETRY, MOUNTAIN INTERVAL, I would like to consider some of the organizational strategies and linking devices that he uses to unify his collection. I would also like to examine some of the collection’s more important motifs and concerns, particularly where they announce departures and new directions from previous collections. I would especially like to comment on the theme of war that, for the first time, enters Frost’s work in specific and direct ways. Finally, I would like to conclude with some comments on both the first poem of the book, “The Road Not Taken” and the last, “The Sound of Trees”, in terms of the roles they play in introducing and summarizing the major theme of the collection. And I would like to begin by examining the collection's title, “Mountain Interval”, in terms of its role in establishing a context for the collected poems.

Robert Frost

In his book’s dedication (see appendix), Frost suggests the poems of Mountain Interval were inspired by or written during the “interval of the South Branch under black mountains” (Frost, Mountain). He goes on to say in his dedication, presumably written to his wife, that there were two other, earlier intervals, and these would correspond to the two other books of poetry he previously published. His repeated use of the word “interval” in his dedication seems to suggest that he places a special significance on the word, and therefore it is important we examine it in some detail. An interval can be an intervening period of time, or it can be a space between things—as between mountains, for example. However, in mathematical terms, an interval can also be the “totality of points on a line between two designated points or endpoints that may or may not be included.” (Websters’s, 745). I underline this final section of the definition because it suggests the potential for paradox that is inherent in the word. An interval can either be a space between two endpoints with only the two endpoints, themselves, having any significance, or it can be defined as the totality that exists between the two endpoints—including or excluding them—with the ‘in-between’ having the significance. Simply stated, an interval can be seen as either an absence or a presence. For Frost, this paradox serves as the basis for his exploration of his most important theme: choice.

His book, Mountain Interval, examines the workings of human choice-making in terms of this paradox: which is the most important—the mountains (or ‘endpoints’) of our choices or that which lies between them? I will examine Frost’s exploration of this theme more fully in my conclusions, but first, I would like to examine another important aspect of the collection’s title, namely, its relevance in establishing a structural unity for the collection’s poems. The very fact that Frost uses the word “Interval” in his title provides a context for his poems. The word suggests, to the reader, that the poems are significant as part of a group, with each poem contributing to the total body of the work. Thus, the reader is encouraged to examine the collection for organizational strategies that act to link the individual poems in some sort of order. And Frost provides such strategies.

Before I examine Frost’s linking strategies, I would like to address two points of authorial emendation that might, initially, be seen as challenging my suggestion that Frost has provided, in Mountain Interval, a series of poems linked both textually and thematically. The first point of revising is Frost’s removal of the poem “The Exposed Nest” from its original position in the first edition (1916) and re-ordering it to follow “An Old Man’s Winter Night”, in later editions. Such changes can be viewed as suggesting either an arbitrariness to ordering poems (they can be slotted in anywhere) or, on the other hand, such changes can also be viewed as a conscientious reworking of ordering schemes to provide a better, over-all effect. I subscribe to the later view, but I admit my initial reaction to Frost’s emendations was puzzlement. The linkage I had seen between “The Exposed Nest” and the poem that originally followed it, “Out, Out—”, as found in the first edition ordering scheme, suggested strong textual ties. For example, the half-line from “Nest”: “We turned to other things.” (line 32) is echoed by the final lines found in “Out, Out—” that directly follows it: “And they, since they / Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.” (“Out” 33-34). As well, the story lines had a parallel. In “”Nest”, the cutter bar” (14) had failed in “tasting flesh” (15) of the young birds; whereas, the buzz saw of “Out” succeeded in ‘tasting’ the flesh of the young boy’s hand. There, Frost’s speaker says: “the saw / As if to prove saws knew what supper meant / Leaped out at the boy’s hand,” (15-16). To break the order between two poems with such close textual ties is significant, and I will suggest the reasons Frost may have had for changing the order when I discuss his overall linking strategies.

The second revision Frost made in his later editions was to add two new poems in place of “The Exposed Nest” (see appendix for the 1916 ordering). Again, either arbitrariness to ordering is suggested on Frost’s part, by such an addition, or else a careful reworking and refining of the order. I suggest his ordering is of the later nature because he provides a strong textual link between the new poem “The Last Word Of A Bluebird” and “Out, Out—” that follows. In the new poem, there is a reference to an “ax” (“Bluebird” 19), linking it directly with “Out” and its buzz saw references. In my examination of the linking strategies found in Mountain Interval, I will suggest that both the re-ordering emendation of “Nest” and the inclusion of two new poems were done for thematic linkage purposes. In the new ordering of the later editions, all the poems ‘fit’ better within their local group of poems and more readily compliment the thematic concerns of their group than in the previous ordering. For example, the new poems, located between “A Girl’s Garden” and “Out, Out—”, have images of separation and isolation in them. In the case of “Locked Out”, the flowers outside are seen to be separated from the light of the window inside. In “Bluebird”, the person to whom the speaker is addressing is seen to be separated from the little bluebird, and of course in “Out, Out—”, immediately following, it is the boy who is literally separated from his own hand by the buzz saw. The group as a whole seems to suggest some failure of growth or a limitation to the spirit of childhood. Death imagery is strong in “Out, Out—”, and there are images of threat and menace to be found in both “Locked Out” and “Bluebird”. I will review this group in my discussion of the overall linking strategies of the collection, which I will now turn to.

 

Linking strategies use words or phrases from one poem and repeat them or echo them in another. They can be images that are identical or similar, as, for example, the similar images of the ax in “Bluebird” and the buzz saw of “Out, Out—”. Linking strategies can be seen in common themes that are found between poems: themes such as isolation, inspiration or fertility (all three of which are found in Mountain Interval). Such linking strategies in poetry collections can be used to provide a sense of movement between poems: an idea or an image can recur and develop through a series of poems and suggest different perspectives and interpretations of that idea or image. These different perspectives and interpretations, in turn, can encourage more complex responses to individual poems. As well, each poem’s particular themes and motifs can then be examined in light of the collection as a whole. They can be seen as adding to the sum total of the collection’s thematic concerns. For most of the poems of Mountain Interval, Frost provides such linking devices. There are specific words and images that he uses to link one poem to the next, and there are groups of poems that share common themes or concerns. In his collection, Frost’s use of linking devices and the movements he suggests through the various thematic groupings of poems are complicated. Nevertheless, his underlying organization is quite simple. On one level—the organizational level—he is telling a simple tale. In A Boy’s Will, Frost articulated the journeying from adolescence to adulthood, and this simple framework served as the basis for his first collection of poetry. In North of Boston, his second collection, Frost seems to have been continuing his ‘journey’, but more in the social field: examining individuals as they come into society. In Mountain Interval, his third, Frost is again telling a simple tale. This time, he is telling the story of courtship, marriage and the raising of children—but with a twist. We shall see that the movement of the individual from a state of isolation, at the beginning of the collection, to marriage and the raising of children, later on, forms the basis of his work. Moreover, we shall see that this journey is explored in sequence, beginning with the first poem, “Christmas Trees”, through to the last, “Snow”, but we shall also see a distortion of this process with Frost’s introduction of war imagery midway through his collection. And the effect this imagery has upon the general tone and outcomes of the ensuing poems is chilling.

If the poems of the collection are taken individually and not seen as part of this larger sequence, then much of the power of Frost’s message is missed. For example, the descent imagery that begins to occur in the poems following the final children’s poem, “Out, Out—”, is significant. In the closing lines, the speaker says, after the boy has died, there was “No more to build on there.” (“Out”, 33). These bleak ending lines suggest a society in decline, with no hope for the future. In terms of Frost’s basic ‘tale’, we witness a tragedy here: the destruction of youth and the end of generation. The four poems that follow all have images of descent or downward movement, and here Frost envisions this series of downward movements not in the sense of any positive returning to the earth (as in “Birches” or “Bond and Free”). Rather, the descents seem to suggest decline and sterility. In the final poem of the sequence, we are left with the image of a childless couple, alone and isolated, in winter, in their house half-buried in the snow.  

 

I have indicated that the sequence of Frost’s poems begins with “Christmas Trees” and ends with “Snow”. In fact, “The Road Not Taken” is the first poem of Mountain Interval and “The Sound of Trees” is the end one. This brings us to another point concerning emendations Frost made subsequent to his 1916 edition. Both of these poems are originally italicized. Furthermore, in the first edition, six additional poems (“Christmas Trees”, “In The Home Stretch”, “Birches”, “The Hill Wife”, “Bonfire” and “Snow”) were printed with their titles in full capital letters (the rest were printed with small capitals). The questions to ask are: What did Frost intend by so capitalizing the titles of these six poems? What was his intention in italicizing the two poems that begin and end the collection and thus distinguishing them from the main body of the poems? And why did he eliminate all these distinctions in subsequent editions? The answer to the first question seems to lie in the poems’ function as indicators, within the collection, of six basic divisions—six thematic divisions—that Frost uses to tell his story. The two endpoint poems represent the larger context within which the body of the poems is placed, and I have mentioned them before; these two seem to explore the workings of human choice-making within which everything else ‘fits’. To capitalize those six poems within the collection’s body and italicize the endpoint poems suggests that Frost wished the reader to be very clear of his divisions and their place in the larger context. It follows, then, that to remove these distinctions in subsequent editions suggests Frost wished the reader to be less clear about the divisions. Perhaps he felt such divisions suggested boundaries between the thematic divisions, and this would run counter to his general organizational strategies that show just how inter-connected the poems of the collection, in fact, are.

“Christmas Trees” both begins the body of the collection as well as introducing the first thematic grouping (as indicated by the special capitalization in Frost’s original text). The group (“Christmas Trees”, “An Old Man’s Winter Night”, “The Exposed Nest” and “A Patch of Old Snow”) is characterized by a sense of undeveloped potential, of inaction and of things not known or forgotten. For example, the speaker says he was unaware of what he had: “A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!” ("Trees”, 55). The old man in “An Old Man’s Winter Night” cannot remember why he has entered the room. There is a similar forgetfulness in “A Patch of Old Snow”, and in “The Empty Nest” the speaker cannot recall if he ever returned to see if the young birds had survived the night. It should be mentioned that “The Empty Nest” fits well, within this first grouping of poems. In his 1916 edition, Frost originally placed it following “A Girl’s Garden”. He may have done so because he felt it should be a part of the group of poems dealing with children. However, the image of the newly-hatched birds that are vulnerable and exposed to “too much world at once” (“Nest", 19) is particularly suitable following “An Old Man’s Winter Night” with that poem’s image of the old man who is, himself, ‘exposed’ to the night looking in at him: “All out-of-doors looked darkly in at him” (“Old Man’s”, 1). Both poems suggest imagery of withdrawal and a lack of engagement with life. Potential for action is not evident in either poem. In terms of Frost’s underlying tale, the poems of this group—as a whole—suggest isolation. There is no communion with others; no growth is seen here, and it is significant that three of the four poems are set in winter—a time of sterility and death.

 

If isolation is the chief characteristic of the first group of poems, “In The Home Stretch” signals a change for the next grouping. These poems, beginning with “In The Home Stretch” and up to “Range-Finding” suggest a movement from the isolation of the first group toward some sort of communion; in the sense of Frost’s underlying scheme, they suggest a ‘calling’ toward marriage and sexual union. The first two poems of the group, “In the Home Stretch” and “The Telephone” are linked with the use of a single word. The wife of “Home Stretch” urges her husband to bed on their first night together in their new home: “Come, the light,” she says (200). In “The Telephone”, the speaker says he has returned home to his wife after he mysteriously hears someone call out the word “Come” (“Telephone”, 17). In both cases, there is the suggestion of a ‘calling away’ from an isolated existence and towards union with another. In “Meeting and Passing”, the next poem in the group, there is a textual link between it and “The Telephone”. In “The Telephone”, the speaker leans his head against the flower (as one would to the receiver of a telephone, especially of the kind made in the early 20th century). In “Meeting and Passing”, the speaker is seen leaning at the gate “for the view” (2). In the first poem, the speaker listens for a calling; he listens for his wife. In the next poem, the speaker is looking for a ‘calling’ (a “view”). There is a progression suggested here in moving from the more passive image of listening, to searching with one’s eyes. At the gate, the speaker ‘looks’ for the view; he wishes to see more clearly what it is that calls him. This, in turn, suggest a progression forward in the journey toward union, an increase in activity and a growing awareness of the potential for such union that did not exist in the first group of poems. Furthermore, in “Meeting”, the speaker and his future wife are envisioned drawing “[t]he figure of our being” in the dust (6). This suggests an image of definition, of defining their growing relationship more clearly, of ‘seeing’ it more clearly. In the figure, they draw it. It becomes more substantial as a result. The ‘calling’ is now something that the speaker can define and describe in human terms (by drawing it, picturing it).

Frost continues his linking strategy by nicely linking the image of writing in the dust with the following poem, “Hyla Brook”. In that poem, Frost’s speaker envisions the dry brook bed as being like a “faded sheet of paper” (10). In both poems, the element of mortality is introduced with such imagery. ‘Writing’, with their footprints, in the dust (“Meeting”, 6) and the fact that the dry brook bed of “Hyla” is like a faded paper sheet suggests images of death. While such images suggest a darker side to union, nevertheless, the basic movement of these poems is toward union. With “Hyla Brook” and the following poem, “The Oven Bird”, Frost expands his vision of a call to union. The speaker in “Hyla” seems to suggest that the memory of the richness of the springtime brook is enough for love. To remember the past is enough to be able to love in the present, he seems to say. 

This, of course, is in contrast with the first group of poems where an awareness of the past, with its vision of a potential for the future, is generally absent. Such potential is seen to lie in the union with another and the moving away from a state of isolation. The poems of the first group suggest there is a general lack of awareness of such potential or else there is the sense that such potential has been forgotten. In the second group of poems, memory seems to be awakening, and because memory of the past is now activated, love in the present can begin to occur.

“Hyla Brook” and the following poem, “The Oven Bird”, are linked with images of song. The brook had been full of “song and speed” (“Hyla”, 1) in the springtime, and “The Oven Bird” begins with the line: “There is a singer everyone has heard[.]” (1). Again, a progression forward is noted. Just as the song of the brook (its past) calls to the speaker to remember it and to love it in the present, so, too, in “The Oven Bird” does the bird call out to the speaker to remember the imperatives of life and to engage in the process of union. But the bird ‘articulates’ this more clearly, in “all but words” (13). We see the call is becoming clearer. The next poem, “Bond and Free”, links together with “The Oven Bird” in the image of “Thought” (4) as having “dauntless wings” (5). This poem is a complex examination of the conflict between thought and emotions, and which one should, ultimately, determine our response to the call. In terms of Frost’s underlying scheme, the process of being called to union by something outside oneself (by another person, by nature) is now seen to be internalized; it is now within the divided human psyche, and the process now changes from being called, to acting upon the call.

“Birches” nicely defines the problem that Thought is seen to have in “Bond and Free”. The question, now, is not whether to respond, but where to respond. Does it (do we) respond ‘to the heavens’, intellectually or abstractly perhaps, or, as “Birches” images it, to the earth? And here these two poems link with the image of the earth. “Bond and Free” opens with “[l]ove has earth to which she clings” (1), and “Birches” has the wonderful linking line: “Earth’s the right place for love” (“Birches, 52). 

 

Frost’s organizing tale has moved from images of isolation, to images of being called upon and awakening to the call, to images of responding to the call. The next poems in the group carry this movement a little further, and more simply. “Pea Brush” and “Putting in the Seed” both suggest images of fertility and sexuality, a more straightforward approach to portraying union. However, as with Frost’s poetry in general, such fertility is not without its complications: the wild trilliums are bent by the cut birch logs piled on top of them in “Pea Brush”, and in “Putting in the Seed”, it is not clear whether the springtime passion of the speaker will mature and ‘bear fruit’ in terms of human procreation. In the next poem, “A Time to Talk”, the speaker is called away from his hoeing (his union with the earth). Again, the complexities of each poem need to be examined separately, but the general movement of these poems is surely toward some kind of procreative act.

Frost continues his linking strategies by connecting the birch trees in “Birches” with “the birch” (“Pea, 4) of “Pea Bush”. The image of “peas”, in turn, links both “Pea Bush” and the following poem, “Putting In The Seed”. As I have suggested, a problematic element occurs in this part of the sequence. In “Putting”, the wife calls the speaker away from his task to supper. The possibility that she may not be able to call him away perhaps suggests some disturbance to the human procreative calling. In “A Time To Talk”, it is a “friend” who calls the speaker away from his garden. I suggest Frost, at this point, is introducing outside forces into his sequence that are potentially disruptive to union. For example, he may be suggesting social forces are acting upon the process of union in “A Time”, by having the speaker called away from his hoeing by a “friend”. Frost provides an interesting link between this poem and “The Cow In Apple Time”, that follows. He uses the image of a “stone wall” (“A Time”, 9) and a “wall” (Cow”, 2) to link the two poems. We have seen in the poem “Mending Wall” (from his second poetry collection, North of Boston) how a wall for Frost can be both a place of union and of separation.

In “Cow”, a wall may also be considered as a protective barrier. “Something” (“Cow”, 1) calls the cow into the apple orchard. What that something is, is unclear. Equally unclear is the purpose of the call: is it a call to union, to procreation? If so, then the results of the call upon the cow are mixed, at best. It is significant that the cow, in transgressing the barrier-wall between pasture and apple orchard and eating the apples that have fallen to the ground there, loses her ability to produce milk: “Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry.” (11). Like the hoe that stands inverted—blade-end up—on the ground in the preceding poem “A Time To Talk”, the cow’s functions seem to be inverted: she “bellows” (10). But it is bulls that bellow. Here Frost seems to be suggesting that the cow has somehow inverted (or subverted) a natural order by eating the apples. Furthermore, the cow bellows on a knoll “against the sky” (10), suggesting a conflict with nature or the ‘heavens’. Danger is seen to accompany the call. In terms of our sequence, however, the question to ask is whether this danger is unnatural. And here, Frost begins a major shift in focus.

 

The following poem, “An Encounter” links very directly with “Cow”. The telephone pole in the cedar swamp is imaged by Frost’s speaker as being “against the blue” (“An”, 11). Conflict is suggested, just as with the cow bellowing against the sky, but here—for the first time—modern technology enters Frost’s poems. His use of the telephone pole is interesting. In the earlier poem entitled “The Telephone”, the telephone is seen as a natural instrument of communication—it is a flower. In “An Encounter”, the telephone pole is a “barkless specter” (14), a dead tree among the living; its place in the cedar swamp is seen as unnatural. Yet it captures the speaker’s attention and forces them to look up “to the heavens” (9). It is also called a “resurrected” tree (12). Are we to respond to the telephone pole as if it were an agent of good or evil? Here, Frost’s imagery is complex, as are the reader’s responses. Nevertheless, there remains the suggestion of menace in the image of the dead tree being raised up among the living. In terms of our sequence, the modern world, with its technology, is seen as potentially menacing to the act of union. Now, the distant cities of the modern world are brought to the woods along the wires of dead trees. Additionally, the “yellow strands” (17) of the telephone wires directly tie in with the “diamond-strung” cobwebs, and the “thread” and straining cables” (“Range-Finding” 1, 10, 11) found in the next poem. Between images of procreation and marriage, in the middle of his sequence of responding to the call of union, with “Range-Finding”, Frost presents us with an image of war. 

 

“Range-Finding” is a significant poem because, for the first time, Frost introduces into his poetry the element of war. Nowhere in any of his previously published works does he present such a direct reference. His earlier poetry can be characterized as intensely localized, rural and personal. In Mountain Interval, modern technology, along with war, enters his work. There is a car, for example, in “Christmas Trees” where previously all his roads had been dusty and empty. He entitles one of his poems “The Telephone” and there are images of telephone and telegraph lines, as I have mentioned, in “An Encounter” and in the later poem “Line-Gang”. In “Out, Out—” there is the ugly image of the buzz saw. With “Range-Finding”, the processes of warfare are introduced to the collection, and in the poem “The Bonfire”, Frost specifically uses the word “war”: “War is for everyone, for children too.” (“Bonfire”, 110) [Text’s italicization]. In this poem, there are also allusions to bombers in the sky and battles at sea. In the later poem, “Vanishing Red” there is the suggestion of racial conflict between native peoples and white people. Like many modern poets of his time, Frost seems to be turning to urban society for his inspiration. However, as suggested in “Range-Finding” and “Bonfire”, the modern world he envisions brings considerable elements of menace. In particular, it is the poem “Range-Finding” that introduces a destabilizing factor into the natural processes of procreation: the human process of courtship, marriage and the begetting of children that we witness as Frost’s basic organizing scheme, his ‘tale’ in Mountain Interval, that is seen to be disrupted by the elements of war. Here, it is important to note that Frost does not specifically link war with the destabilization of natural processes. He instead introduces the element of war into his collection and continues his sequence of poems—but always with this subtext in mind. War is ever-present now, and what we witness in the remainder of the poems are the consequences of that presence.

In “Range-Finding”, after the bullet has passed by, the mother bird returns to her nest, and the butterfly adjusts its descent to the flower. Nature is barely disturbed by what Frost images as the unnatural intrusion of war into the upland pasture scene of his poem. What is barely discernible to the creatures of nature—the passing bullet—will prove catastrophic for the humans, who, Frost is suggesting, live beyond nature, or beyond the natural bounds of nature, in their practice of war. War, for Frost, is unnatural in its disturbance of natural human processes.

The next thematic grouping of poems is the “Hill Wife” cycle. This group of poems summarizes the effect war has had upon the family. In our sequence thus far, we have moved from isolation, to a call to union, to union itself. Now we have, in “The Hill Wife” poems, depictions of human couples. In the normal course of things, one would expect these poems to reflect images of stability and the preparations for childbearing: this is where our sequence should be leading. Instead, the poems present images of loneliness, threat, conflict and nightmare. Frost links these poems to the previous “Range-Finding” with the image of the birds returning to their nests: In “Loneliness”, the first poem of the cycle, the birds are returning, yet the wife finds it disturbing. She says she and her husband “ought not to have to care / So much” (1-2) about such an event. Why this disturbs her is unclear, but she goes on to say that the birds act for themselves, they “fill their breasts / but with each other” (10-11). There is the suggestion of estrangement of the human from the natural world; a sense of separation is noted. War has entered the world, in Frost’s poems, and he may be suggesting that such an event will “set the wild at naught” (“Line-Gang”, 12). War has entered the world and we witness its destabilizing effects on the human world very clearly in the “Hill Wife” poems. The final poem of the group, “The Impulse”, contains the image of a young wife who has gone out to “break a bough” (13) of black alder. The lullaby Rock-A-Bye-Baby” comes immediately to mind with its mixture of soothing rhythm and disquieting imagery, and this adds a further note of menace to a poem that ends with the image of the childless wife disappearing into the woods. Thus, by the end of this group of poems, we witness human procreation that is threatened and compromised with images of death. Moreover, Frost uses this unnerving image of the “bough” found in “Impulse” to link the “Hill Wife” poems with the next group.

Frost links this image of bough breaking”, with the phrase: “bough on bough” (“Bonfire”, 6) in the next poem, “Bonfire". With this poem, he begins a new grouping, and a new thematic concern: children. He moves his basic storyline ahead; having just examined in the previous group the effects war has on the establishment of human sexual relationships and families. Here, he provides us with poems about the relationship between adults and children. As I have said, the piled-up boughs of “Bonfire” connect with the unsettling image of the broken bough in the preceding “Hill Wife” poem. The image of the fallen cradle, from the lullaby, that is evoked in “Loneliness", is expanded in “Bonfire” to suggest the inability of the adult world to safely nurture its young. This group of poems explores the failure of the adult world to care for and protect its children. 

In “Bonfire”, the speaker calls the children to come uphill with him to set the bonfire ablaze (and we note the additional linkage with war-imaged “Range-Finding” and its “upland pasture”). It is important to note that this action remains incomplete: he only suggests, in the end, that this is what they should do. In normal circumstances, the lighting of a bonfire can be a joyous event—traditionally done to ward off evil, or as a sign of community, or of a ritual re-lighting of the sun in wintertime. The speaker, however, wishes to light the bonfire in order to “scare ourselves” and be “reckless”, or “the talk / Of people brought to windows” (“Bonfire” 1, 2, 10-11). The speaker goes on to tell the children that his lighting of a previous bonfire was dangerous: it had almost set fire to the woods and town. Yet he insists this is what they should do. Frost may be suggesting that the ritual of regeneration (of lighting a bonfire, of bringing on new growth (as with children) is now something that is dangerous. The speaker, at the end of the poem says: “The best way is to come uphill with me / And have our fire and laugh and be afraid.” (113-14). It is dangerous, in both the act itself, and what can happen to the new generation afterwards. “Bonfire” examines the role of parents. The group (“Bonfire”, “A Girl’s Garden”, the new poems, “Locked Out” and “The Last Word of the Bluebird”, and the tragic poem, Out, Out—” all share this theme. 

With the exception of “Out”, we witness tales told by adults to children or tales about children. In “A Girl’s Garden”, for example, we witness a tale told by an adult about her childhood. For Frost, the general purpose of this group seems to be in examining how children are nurtured. In the normal course of things, children are nurtured by the past; by tales, stories, and traditional wisdoms that are handed down to them to educate and comfort them as they grow. Frost, to make this point perfectly clear (and to perhaps educate us as well!), subtitles two of the poems with the line: “As told to a child” (in “Locked Out” and “The Last Word Of A Bluebird” [Text’s italicization]. But as discussed earlier, what the adults of Frost’s modern world tell their children are stories that “cut them off” (“Locked”, 3) from the light, like the flowers of “Locked Out” are cut off from the light of the locked house with its now-shuttered window. They are cut off from the ‘light’ of family—their ‘roots’, so to speak—as seen in “A Girl’s Garden” where the woman, upon returning to the home and garden she had as a child, does not know if the apple tree she finds there is the same one she planted as a child. Finally, in “Out, Out—”, the child is cut off from life itself.

 

Frost, of course, continues his linking devices. “The Bonfire” links with “A Girl’s Garden” in its use of the word “neighbours” (“Bonfire, 84) and “Neighbour” (“A Girl’s”, 1) as found in “A Girl’s Garden”. The word emphasizes the communal responsibility of parenting: that we all share, as neighbours, in the transmission of culture through our stories, and in the education and nurturing of our children. Further links include the image of flowers being cut off from the window light in “Locked Out”, as I mentioned earlier. This image, in turn, links it with the following poem, “The last Word Of The Bluebird” with its image of the ax (as an instrument for cutting); and I have mentioned this poem’s connection to “Out, Out—”

In “Out, Out—”, Frost is most emphatic in his statement of the dangers of war and its effects upon human generation. The title of the poem is taken from an old story, a ‘tale’ from the past that we use to teach in the present. It is taken from Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. It is contained within the famous passage of Macbeth’s lament upon hearing the news of Lady Macbeth’s death; the passage with the storied lines: “Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,” (Riverside Shakespeare. V.v.19-20). The specific line which includes Frost’s title is in: “Out, out brief candle! / Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,” (V.v.23-24). The lament is one of the most evocative in English literature, and Frost’s use of it for the title to his poem is appropriate, given that it’s subject matter suggests the death of youth and the end of generation. At the poem’s end, after the boy dies, the speaker says there was nothing more to build on, and as we shall see, from this tragic point onward, the rest of Frost’s sequence is ‘downhill’.

 

It is appropriate to summarize the final group of poems in such a manner, as a descent. The poem, “Brown’s Descent” is followed by the odd, downhill walk in “Gum-Gatherer”, and the line from “Gum-Gatherer”: “take it down” (38) connects it to the next poem, “Line-Gang” that has a further movement of descent in the disturbing image of the line-gang as they “throw a forest down” (2) installing the dead tree-poles of telephone and telegraph lines. Here, nature itself seems to be descending. The natural order of human procreation has been destroyed (or greatly compromised) as we have seen. Now nature, too, will be destroyed as the modern world—war and technology—takes over. In “Line-Gang”, we witness their laughter as they work. Frost’s speaker says laughter is the “oath of towns” (11), and Frost, himself, may be saying that such laughter is, in fact, the curse of towns. This laughter, imagined with malice, is echoed in the laugh of the miller, in the poem, “Vanishing Red” that follows.

In this poem, we witness a further descent, or implied descent, through a man-hole into water. The imagery of this poem is particularly complex, but for the purposes of examining it in terms of our sequence, the descent that began with “Out, Out—” can be considered complete: the “Red Man” disappears: the sequence is finished with this poem. With the colour red, Frost may be suggesting, not only a Native American, as the character “John” (19) appears to be, but perhaps the passionate man, the Sexual Man. Red can also suggest the sun, for example, or gods of war, or love, joy, festivity, anger, martyrdom, and so on. While Frost’s sequence of descent seems to suggest the inevitable decline of humanity with the introduction of war (or at least modern war), perhaps his vision is not completely despairing. 

“Vanishing Red” is a complex poem whose surface images suggest a mystery: the miller appears to murder the Red Man. However, some of Frost’s images may lead to other interpretations. For example, the fact that the Red Man’s name is “John” and that his supposed death is in water suggests some reference to John the Baptist and Christian baptism. And in addition, the images of fish in the water suggest elements of Christian symbolism.

The image of the “wheel pit” (19) is also interesting. The wheel could represent the sun, or it could represent the Wheel of Life, or time, etc. The “pit” might suggest the Christian hell. My point in detailing these possible interpretations of various images within the poem is to suggest the poem’s complexity, aside from its place in Frost’s underlying scheme, as well as to suggest that Frost means to provide some hope in his vision for the modern world. Perhaps he means to say that a variety of possible interpretations suggests a variety of possible ‘outcomes’, in the poem, of course, but perhaps also in life.

The final poem, “Snow”, ends with a childless couple. The sequence has begun in winter, and now ends there. This suggests an image of despair, but I think, here too, there is room for hope. The poem ends with the couple alone in their winter house, but Frost also provides us with the character of "Meserve" who is the father of ten children. At the poem's end, he is connected to the childless couple by the telephone: he phones them to let them know he has arrived home safely. With this image, Frost may be suggesting there is some link to the future, some slight hope for the modern world. He is perhaps suggesting that there is still some ‘connection’ to natural human procreation. It is interesting that he images this connection through the use of modern technology. While modern technology is seen as the destroyer of natural processes, it paradoxically, may well prove to be their saviour.

 

I would like to conclude by briefly commenting on the endpoint poems that begin and end Frost’s collection [see appendix for poems]. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that these two poems frame the collection. Frost originally had “The Road Not Taken” and “The Sound of Trees” printed in italics. They are linked to each other in this manner, and they are also linked in terms of setting and motif: both are summer poems and are about trees or have trees as their major imagery. They are also linked thematically: both are concerned with choice-making.

“The Road Not Taken”, arguably one of Frost's most famous poems, introduces the necessity of choosing. The speaker must choose which road to take. The poem examines this process of choice making and suggests, ultimately, that the choices we make are never those we determine. The decisions we make—or think we make—are merely rationales and after-thoughts. Frost suggests human choice is something akin to impulse: unconscious for the most part and ultimately a mystery. Human choice is also a burden. If we see this poem as framing the body of the collection, then we see the simple story that Frost tells us is part of the growth and maturation of this choice making process. In this case, the choices are to move from a state of isolation to one of union and procreation, but I think the frame of “Road” also illustrates the inherent mystery and unpredictability of such a process.

In “The Sound Of Trees”, Frost ends on a note of hope (it is, after all, a summer poem). While there are complications within the poem; the trees tossing about are seen to “scare” (22) the clouds, for example, nevertheless, the trees are something the speaker feels compelled to both listen to (though he does not understand why he should) and to imitate. They disrupt our “pace” and “joy”, he says (7, 8), and we must “suffer” (6) their presence. Yet he will listen to them. Perhaps Frost is suggesting here that the pain and discomfort engendered by the trees are a result of the effects of modern society. He may be saying that our pain and puzzlement (with the trees; with nature) comes from our estrangement from the natural world brought on by the advance of modernity. The trees in the poem are a constant and painful reminder of this reality. They seem to force us, the speaker says, to acquire “a listening air” (9). We listen, perhaps in pain, but still we listen to the sound of the trees. The poem ends with the speaker saying he will leave (as the trees ‘say’ they will leave, but never do). He says he will “be gone” (25). The image of death is suggested here, but I think hope comes from the speaker acting in imitation of the trees.  He adopts, or says he will adopt, what he sees is the “reckless choice” (20) of nature: to set forth “somewhere” (29). Perhaps Frost is saying, in the end, that it is not the choices we make that matter, but only that we keep making them. 

 

 

 

 

 

     Works Cited

Frost. Mountain Interval. Henry Holt. NY: 1921.

 

---. The Poetry of Robert Frost. Ed. Lathem, Edward C. Henry Holt. NY: 1975

 

Webster’s Ninth Collegiate Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. Springfiesld: 1984.

 

Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Ed. G.B. Evans. The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974.

 

PROF'S COMMENTS: It is a pleasure to read such ambitious scholarship. You read not only poems but their coherence as a book. Clearly the best work in the class. [Grade] 87

Randy

 

 

 

 

 

[Index of MI poems 1916 first edition and later revised edition, and the dedication. Old-school cut-and-paste]