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> Frost is the darkest of poets Interesting, I always thought of him as quite optimistic. Maybe because my introduction to him was The way a crow Shook do

> Frost is the darkest of poets Interesting, I always thought of him as quite optimistic. Maybe because my introduction to him was The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued. it goes well with Monet's The Magpie and hot coffee

PyWoody 3y ago
'Out, Out--' The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain ranges one behind the other Under the sunset far into Vermont. And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled, As it ran light, or had to bear a load. And nothing happened: day was all but done. Call it a day, I wish they might have said To please the boy by giving him the half hour That a boy counts so much when saved from work. His sister stood beside him in her apron To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw, As if to prove saws knew what supper meant, Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap— He must have given the hand. However it was, Neither refused the meeting. But the hand! The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh, As he swung toward them holding up the hand Half in appeal, but half as if to keep The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all— Since he was old enough to know, big boy Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart— He saw all spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off— The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’ So. But the hand was gone already. The doctor put him in the dark of ether. He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath. And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright. No one believed. They listened at his heart. Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it. No more to build on there. And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs. or 'Desert Places' Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast In a field I looked into going past, And the ground almost covered smooth in snow, But a few weeds and stubble showing last. The woods around it have it - it is theirs. All animals are smothered in their lairs. I am too absent-spirited to count; The loneliness includes me unawares. And lonely as it is, that loneliness Will be more lonely ere it will be less - A blanker whiteness of benighted snow With no expression, nothing to express. They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars - on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places. are both pretty dark, off the top of my head. He has a number of poems that are more subtle and dig away at you in the best possible way.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Yeah. Frost has some really dark poems. The chainsaw one is always my go-to example. I've had people basically not believe them when I've told them.
  - hermanradtke 3y ago
    > chainsaw buzz saw - blade; no chain
    - ghaff 3y ago
      The actual text makes it sound a lot more like a chainsaw than something else but I don't actually know given the period written.
      - bdamm 3y ago
        The 1916 poem was based on a true story about a boy that Robert knew, who died in 1910. They did have circular-saw like machines in 1910 that were popular for cutting firewood, according to my wiki dive.
        ghaff 3y ago
        Thanks. I would have assumed cutting firewood would have involved a chainsaw but apparently not.
        wrycoder 3y ago
        Hadn’t been invented yet! No small gas engines in 1910.
      - mikestew 3y ago
        It’s a fixed buzzsaw. One might be confused by the “leaped at his hand”, but Frost says in reality that “he must have given the hand”. Basically, his sister called him to supper, which apparently distracted the boy enough that he accidentally stuck his hand in the blade. A buzzsaw is in essence a large version of a table saw, and table saws eat many fingers and thumbs every year. Now imagine that the table saw blade is four feet tall.
dev_tty01 3y ago
Hmm. I think that can be read different ways. He had a dark foreboding for the day and the crow encounter only saved a part of the day. Rather than optimistic, it could be perceived as still able recognize a small bit of light through his darkness. That's what great about art. The perception and situation of the viewer shapes the experience.
- FergusArgyll 3y ago
  To me, that's optimism. It's really the same feeling I get from The Magpie. It's like; There aren't many good things about the winter, it's cold, it's miserable, but look how pretty it can be sometimes
- saltcured 3y ago
  Well, it's full of conventionally dark symbols: the crow, hemlock, and cold winter season. And the diction echoes this with words like shook, dust, and rued. Other word choices could have told a very similar story in a more cheery mood, if desired. It's also a vignette devoid of human contact, which is common to many of Frost's more introspective poems. The narrator is the main character in an empty or lonely scene, except for a brief interaction with an animal. Even the choice to say "change of mood" delays clarity until the words "save" and "rued" provide disambiguation. Yet it is also quite short, almost an epigram. So while the final message is one of positive valence, it is rooted in dark humor, almost a wink emerging from a scowl. I think this is an example where Frost is revisiting some of the ground shared with one of his early influences, Edgar Allen Poe.
imjonse 3y ago
More than optimistic, I found it funny. Then I realized I misread crow as cow.
ajkjk 3y ago
I dunno anything about poetry but the meter of that poem bugs me. Why not "from hemlock tree"? there are like random extra syllables.
- browningstreet 3y ago
  > The way a crow > Shook down on me > The dust of snow > From a hemlock tree a.. on.. of.. a Also, it's all colloquial, "From hemlock tree" isn't how we speak.
- Jtsummers 3y ago
  It's 4/4/4/6 syllables and ABAB rhyming. The second verse, first line, is 4 syllables if you pronounce "given" more as "g'ven", smashing the g into the v.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ksenzee 3y ago
  Poetry in English is usually less about syllables and more about stressed syllables.
Amorymeltzer 3y ago
To put a title to it, that's Dust of Snow
temp0826 3y ago
Considering symbolism of hemlock and of the crow? It's hard to say at one glance, it could be taken with some heck of a lot darker implications. Then again, "rued" may have an extra meaning too (rue = ruta graveolens = "herb of grace"). Great poem nonetheless :).
alephknoll 3y ago
> Maybe because my introduction to him was Would've thought most would view it as dark and melancholy and resigned. You get optimism from those lines? Do you feel the following is optimistic? '... The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.' In some sense, I guess it can be viewed as optimistic. In the way 'death cures all' can be viewed as optimistic. Just never thought of it that way. Interesting.
QuercusMax 3y ago
One of my favorites is Birches. He does talk about wanting to leave the earth and then come back. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44260/birches https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44260/birches
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
Frost's poetry is famously ambiguous. Even his most famous poem, which people usually assume is about the positive attributes of a life of nonconformity, can be read from the opposite perspective: > Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— > I took the one less traveled by, > And that has made all the difference Note he doesn't state whether the difference was positive or negative. We put ourselves into the poetry, and much of his work can indeed be quite dark when read from a certain place.
- pmoriarty 3y ago
  > Note he doesn't state whether the difference was positive or negative. But if taken (as it usually is) as a metaphor of life's choices, in this case his life choices made him Robert Frost, the famous, incredibly successful poet -- so it's implied that in his case taking road less traveled by was positive. Now, if the subject of the poem was some anonymous nobody, then maybe the poem would be more ambiguous.

PyWoody 3y ago

'Out, Out--' The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain ranges one behind the other Under the sunset far into Vermont. And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled, As it ran light, or had to bear a load. And nothing happened: day was all but done. Call it a day, I wish they might have said To please the boy by giving him the half hour That a boy counts so much when saved from work. His sister stood beside him in her apron To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw, As if to prove saws knew what supper meant, Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap— He must have given the hand. However it was, Neither refused the meeting. But the hand! The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh, As he swung toward them holding up the hand Half in appeal, but half as if to keep The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all— Since he was old enough to know, big boy Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart— He saw all spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off— The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’ So. But the hand was gone already. The doctor put him in the dark of ether. He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath. And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright. No one believed. They listened at his heart. Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it. No more to build on there. And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs. or 'Desert Places' Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast In a field I looked into going past, And the ground almost covered smooth in snow, But a few weeds and stubble showing last. The woods around it have it - it is theirs. All animals are smothered in their lairs. I am too absent-spirited to count; The loneliness includes me unawares. And lonely as it is, that loneliness Will be more lonely ere it will be less - A blanker whiteness of benighted snow With no expression, nothing to express. They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars - on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places. are both pretty dark, off the top of my head. He has a number of poems that are more subtle and dig away at you in the best possible way.

ghaff 3y ago
Yeah. Frost has some really dark poems. The chainsaw one is always my go-to example. I've had people basically not believe them when I've told them.
- hermanradtke 3y ago
  > chainsaw buzz saw - blade; no chain
  - ghaff 3y ago
    The actual text makes it sound a lot more like a chainsaw than something else but I don't actually know given the period written.
    - bdamm 3y ago
      The 1916 poem was based on a true story about a boy that Robert knew, who died in 1910. They did have circular-saw like machines in 1910 that were popular for cutting firewood, according to my wiki dive.
      - ghaff 3y ago
        Thanks. I would have assumed cutting firewood would have involved a chainsaw but apparently not.
        wrycoder 3y ago
        Hadn’t been invented yet! No small gas engines in 1910.
    - mikestew 3y ago
      It’s a fixed buzzsaw. One might be confused by the “leaped at his hand”, but Frost says in reality that “he must have given the hand”. Basically, his sister called him to supper, which apparently distracted the boy enough that he accidentally stuck his hand in the blade. A buzzsaw is in essence a large version of a table saw, and table saws eat many fingers and thumbs every year. Now imagine that the table saw blade is four feet tall.

dev_tty01 3y ago

Hmm. I think that can be read different ways. He had a dark foreboding for the day and the crow encounter only saved a part of the day. Rather than optimistic, it could be perceived as still able recognize a small bit of light through his darkness. That's what great about art. The perception and situation of the viewer shapes the experience.

FergusArgyll 3y ago
To me, that's optimism. It's really the same feeling I get from The Magpie. It's like; There aren't many good things about the winter, it's cold, it's miserable, but look how pretty it can be sometimes
saltcured 3y ago
Well, it's full of conventionally dark symbols: the crow, hemlock, and cold winter season. And the diction echoes this with words like shook, dust, and rued. Other word choices could have told a very similar story in a more cheery mood, if desired. It's also a vignette devoid of human contact, which is common to many of Frost's more introspective poems. The narrator is the main character in an empty or lonely scene, except for a brief interaction with an animal. Even the choice to say "change of mood" delays clarity until the words "save" and "rued" provide disambiguation. Yet it is also quite short, almost an epigram. So while the final message is one of positive valence, it is rooted in dark humor, almost a wink emerging from a scowl. I think this is an example where Frost is revisiting some of the ground shared with one of his early influences, Edgar Allen Poe.

imjonse 3y ago

More than optimistic, I found it funny. Then I realized I misread crow as cow.

ajkjk 3y ago

I dunno anything about poetry but the meter of that poem bugs me. Why not "from hemlock tree"? there are like random extra syllables.

browningstreet 3y ago
> The way a crow > Shook down on me > The dust of snow > From a hemlock tree a.. on.. of.. a Also, it's all colloquial, "From hemlock tree" isn't how we speak.
Jtsummers 3y ago
It's 4/4/4/6 syllables and ABAB rhyming. The second verse, first line, is 4 syllables if you pronounce "given" more as "g'ven", smashing the g into the v.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ksenzee 3y ago
Poetry in English is usually less about syllables and more about stressed syllables.

Amorymeltzer 3y ago

To put a title to it, that's Dust of Snow

temp0826 3y ago

Considering symbolism of hemlock and of the crow? It's hard to say at one glance, it could be taken with some heck of a lot darker implications. Then again, "rued" may have an extra meaning too (rue = ruta graveolens = "herb of grace"). Great poem nonetheless :).

alephknoll 3y ago

> Maybe because my introduction to him was Would've thought most would view it as dark and melancholy and resigned. You get optimism from those lines? Do you feel the following is optimistic? '... The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.' In some sense, I guess it can be viewed as optimistic. In the way 'death cures all' can be viewed as optimistic. Just never thought of it that way. Interesting.

QuercusMax 3y ago

One of my favorites is Birches. He does talk about wanting to leave the earth and then come back. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44260/birches https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44260/birches

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago

Frost's poetry is famously ambiguous. Even his most famous poem, which people usually assume is about the positive attributes of a life of nonconformity, can be read from the opposite perspective: > Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— > I took the one less traveled by, > And that has made all the difference Note he doesn't state whether the difference was positive or negative. We put ourselves into the poetry, and much of his work can indeed be quite dark when read from a certain place.

pmoriarty 3y ago
> Note he doesn't state whether the difference was positive or negative. But if taken (as it usually is) as a metaphor of life's choices, in this case his life choices made him Robert Frost, the famous, incredibly successful poet -- so it's implied that in his case taking road less traveled by was positive. Now, if the subject of the poem was some anonymous nobody, then maybe the poem would be more ambiguous.