My Robert Frost
I grew up in New Hampshire. When I was about eight years old I saw a poster with Robert Frost’s picture on it announcing that he would be in town, presumably to read his poetry or perhaps just talk, as he was wont to do. There he was on the poster, as old as time (maybe 85 or 86 at the time) with that lined face and shock of white hair. Somehow, I knew who he was and I was impressed that such a great man would be coming to my small town, albeit a college town. I’m not sure how I knew who he was; he was just there, part of my world, my family, my town, my New England, my life. Around that time, I had a great friend named Tommy Jackson who asked for and received a Robert Frost record album for his tenth birthday. Tommy was just a regular kid who liked baseball and frogs and playing around the marshy pond near his house and doing normal boy things like throwing my black, high-top Keds deep into the reeds. He was no artist or linguist or dramatist at age ten, but somehow he developed a taste for Robert Frost poetry and wanted to listen to it more. I remember his Mom saying that he had practically worn the grooves clear through the record, he had played it so much. I can’t say I listened with him, but I knew what he was up to and it too made an impression on me that someone would love listening to poetry that much. As a young teenager, I spent a lot of time with my friend, Billy Nutt, on his family farm in the rural outskirts of Hanover. The fields there were as rocky as any New Hampshire farm and there was a pond nearby, a barn with chickens, maple sugar on snow as a treat in the winter, a stone fence needing repair, and a classic old farmhouse with a big kitchen and a picture window over the sink with a tremendous view. To complete the picture, think of cats, lots of cats. One day Billy showed me his sock drawer stocked with a fresh litter of kittens. It was that kind of farmhouse. Anyway, Billy was ‘too far from town to learn baseball’ but he had birches on his farm and, yes, he showed me how to be ‘a swinger of birches.’ It really was fun, although I don’t recall leaving them limp ‘trailing their leaves on the ground’ as described in the poem. Imagine my surprise to read of this wonderfully exhilarating activity in a Frost poem a few years later. I was hooked on Frost right then and there (or theya, that is). When I was a freshman in college, I noticed a dorm mate of mine named Scotty Mo working on an English paper that mentioned “Out, Out---”. I made an offhand comment about the chainsaw and the young boy losing his hand. Scotty’s eyes bugged out with wonder. He was astounded that such a lowly freshman knew of this poem, or of any poem beyond Paradise Lost for that matter. He stammered a bit, but then it was suddenly clear to him, “Oh yeah, a New Hampshire boy. You were raised on Frost, weren’t you?” “A-yut,” I replied, but in reality, it was not until that very moment that I realized that Frost had been part of my upbringing. When I was about twenty, a very sweet girlfriend gave me a small paperback of Robert Frost poetry compiled by Louis Untermeyer for my birthday. I guess I just kind of grunted in appreciation at the time, but I ended up taking that small book with me to Mexico while on a term of language study. At times, when I was feeling very far from New Hampshire (homesick, you could say), I would pull out the book for a taste of New England a la The Road Not Taken or Two Look at Two. At some point, I memorized Mending Wall. Line by line, I built up the connecting words, just as an actor would learn his lines. Eventually, I had the entire poem in my head, exactly as written. I knew that the poet had chosen each word carefully and that the careful choice had to be respected. I couldn’t go replacing ‘stone’ with ‘rock’, or ‘that’ with ‘which’ or whatever with whatever. The exact words are really important because that is what poetry is – a combination of very particular words, the sound they make together, the story they tell and the feelings they evoke. So I learned Mending Wall, exactly as written in the Untermeyer version (modified over time by Frost, I might add. See his final version in the Lathem Complete Works and here on this site). I no longer needed to have the book. At any time, but almost always when alone, I could conjure up Mending Wall in my mind and jump in time and place from a dry desert or stark classroom in Mexico to a muddy, pungent New England woods strewn with upper boulders and in the company, perhaps, of a cantankerous neighbor. I have since learned many more Frost poems which I always have with me to occasionally recite in my head as I fall asleep or out loud while alone traveling in my car or fishing or walking in the woods. I love the sounds of the words even more than the stories told. Frost called it ‘the sound of sense.’ Of course, I do like the stories told and the images created by the poems and the memories and emotions evoked, but it is the sound the words make that I really love. I don’t purport to understand anything more than the superficial meaning of the poems and I can’t really follow many of the elaborate analyses I have read. “Is that what that poem is about?” I wonder. “Seriously? Was that what Frost was trying to say? Really?” To me, it is the sound of the words strung together that is most significant and soothing – the rhythms, the language of New England, and the choice of simple words that seem to fit together perfectly. The sound is the music of poetry: the music of how the words sound when placed end-to-end and spoken out loud. Most poetry enthusiasts agree that the best way to enjoy poetry is by reading it aloud. The words are the score and the oral interpretation is the music that must be heard. The words of the poem lying on a page are the notes written in the score. They plead to be sounded out. Although there may be people who can read music and hear the entire orchestra in their heads, the vast majority require a vocalization of the notes through the musical instrument. I think it is the same with poetry. The poetry should be heard. Of course, the inflection and intonation don’t leap out at the first reading. Over time, as the meaning of the poem asserts itself, and the sounds combine in surprising and mostly pleasing ways, the overall impact of the poem grows, just as music does, far beyond the words inked on the page. You may find that the combination of the text and sound in this modern-day medium enhances the experience of the poem even more; the text supplements the sound and the sound enhances the text to create a sum greater than the parts. This site is a labor of love that collects those Frost poems that are somehow significant to me and passes them on for others to enjoy. Most tell a story of life on a New England farm long ago using simple words and accessible imagery. Perhaps others will be inspired to learn a poem to carry with them for lifelong enjoyment. These greatest hits serve as my tribute to Robert Frost and to my native New England heritage (thanks, Mom---a real Vermonter). Enjoy. Eric Copenhaver June 2005
Robert Frost Out Loud
Audio Recordings and Texts of Robert Frost Poetry
