ESSAY: A QUICKIE: TWO POEMS by ROBERT FROST

 

Below is a short, in-class essay that I wrote for a 4^th year poetry class on Robert Frost, towards the end of the last Ice Age. My prof, Randy, provides helpful criticisms when my rushed brain gears fused and started to grind. It has some good points. The grade is so-so, but Randy’s comments at the end are encouraging and helped me to work harder at writing a better essay for him later. Prof's comments in red.

 

 

In Class Essay

   Robert Frost (1874-1963)

BOTH “IN HARDWOOD GROVES” AND “SPRING POOLS” reflect a theme common to Frost’s poetry, namely the hidden forces or processes underlying nature. It is interesting to note that both poems suggest cyclically in these forces—the “same leaves over and over again!” in “Hardwood”, or with water that “still” [pun?] reflects the sky in “Spring Pools”. Frost seems to be describing typical natural scenes, but as is so common in his work, these scenes often suggest forces that are contrary to the reader’s normal appreciation of nature. We assume nature acts ‘naturally’; that the processes of existence carry on without a discernible guiding hand or logic behind them. [This sounds like a human projection. Not vague enough for my taste.] Frost often presents natural processes with the suggestion of some sort of rational force behind them.

In “Hardwood”, he suggests this with the image of leaves fitting the earth like a “leather glove”. Most suggestive is the use of the phrase “they must” that he repeats two times in describing the course of decaying leaves. The fact that the speaker insists the leaves must perform certain functions gives rise to the assumption that there may be [or could have been] an alternate set of processes that leaves may take, subtly implying a kind of ‘consciousness’ or choice. And the fact that they must “be put” beneath the “feet” of flowers that are “dancing” suggests conscious forces at work, [Things must fall down doesn’t suggest that gravity IS conscious] particularly with the anthropomorphic imagery of the flowers and placing leaves beneath them, like an offering, as they dance. Again, the reader asks who will place the leaves there and why do the flowers dance?  He concludes the poem with lines suggesting the possibility that there could be some “other world” that operates differently than our own. As is typical with Frost, however, our world’s processes seem distinctly otherworldly. [Nice.]

In “Spring Pools” there is a similar examination of natural processes: the melting of the wood’s pools created by the spring run-off and their connection to the flowers growing beside them. Frost states that both pools and flowers are similar. They both “chill and shiver”; a description more suitable for the effects of cold on human beings, but strange when used to describe flowers. Why do flowers chill and shiver, and how? Does the speaker suggest they are cold and that is why they shiver? In either case, the flowers have non-natural qualities to them: they have decidedly human ones.

However, Frost’s poetry is often ambiguous at these points. He does not provide a simple comparison of the flowers to a human being.

What I would like to focus on is this human-nature blend in such ambiguous syntax found in line 3 of “Spring Pools”: “And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,” where nature seems to have a rationality associated with it. [At least the trees are implied to have the powers of thought.] He continues to describe the process of the disappearing spring pools—they will not flow away. They will “be gone”, the roots of trees with their “dark foliage” will soak them up. Frost presents a contrast between the temporary existence of spring pools (and the flowers mirrored in them) [not in the poem] and the “summer woods”, a more permanent and over-riding force. The speaker tells us that the woods must [?] think before they use their powers: “Let them think twice”, again suggesting the idea of choice in nature [But trees can darken Nature. It is not clear that these thinking trees are IN nature.] that we saw in “Hardwood” there is also the suggestion, by implication, that there are contesting powers to those of the trees that will challenge their blotting up of the spring pools. The revision/substitution* “Let them” for “may well”, sees Frost more clearly presenting natural— but not quite ‘natural’—forces potentially competing against each other, whereas his use of “Let them” suggests a warning, perhaps, or a challenge or an appeal to these ‘rational’ natural forces. [Oxymoron?] In his poem, “Trial By Existence”, Frost’s imaginative portrayal of Heaven, we have a contrast between our limited knowledge (after we are born) of the processes that are supposed to occur there, with the depiction of heavenly processes known only to angels. This poem, coupled with descriptions of natural scenes and activities in “Hardwood” and “Spring Pools”, hints at our awareness of not-quite-natural natural forces.

In Frost’s other world, literally his “some other world” of “Hardwood”, and the implied other world of “Spring Pools”, suggested by the speaker’s warning “Let them think twice”, the type of controlling force or forces is unclear. Frost presents forces in a Christian context (“Heaven”) in “Trial By Existence”, for example, but it is a heaven that is not a unity; there are divisions, even challenges to God’s authority. There are voices questioning the need to choose mortal ignorance over eternal truth. The main point in “Trial”, is that Heaven is not as a Christian would typically conceive it; neither is the Christian God.

Similarly, in “Hardwood” and “Spring Pool”, the controlling forces are not clearly defined: it is not God in the Christian sense, nor is it especially pagan. Rather, such forces seem to lie underneath and support, act upon and conflict with (but ultimately contain) all of nature’s actions, which, of course, include all of humanity’s, as well.

  

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* Not sure what I mean by this; it’s been a long time since I read the poems. There may have been some classroom analysis of Frost's emendations we'd studied earlier. 

 

 

PROF COMMENTS: but so many cultures cling to the idea that we are in Nature, but not of it.

A sensitive and meticulous style of reading as expected. Your sense of the "underlying" and the "behind" at the start of the paper seems vague, but the sharpened and the self-conscious ambiguity of your final formulation deals with all that. Randy.

Grade= 82