ModPo 2013 #36 Boundaries and Cycles: On Frost's "The Mending Wall"

Image of Frost on the wall from iws2.collin.edu. 

Robert Frost, "Mending Wall" 

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
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Robert Frost has always been a favorite of mine. I've stopped by the woods of "Stopping By The Woods" and I've always been haunted by the much quoted "miles to go before I sleep." Well, first of all, I'm fascinated by snow and secondly, Frost is a master of the form. While it's been argued over and over about how the times have changed and that the form needs to follow the times, I have to tip my hat (what a strange idiomatic expression for a Filipina!) to the guy for sticking to his guns (another idiomatic expression...but perhaps one more in touch with the Philippines) and doing the most he could with the traditional form.

I appreciate his argument while I don't necessarily subscribe to it. Many, many years ago, I wrote free verse long before I was formally introduced to it in grade school. My teacher corrected my poems by making my lines rhyme! My stepmother asked to meet my teacher and she gave my teacher a piece of her mind. I can imagine my grade four self meeting Frost (one frosty evening) and petulantly asking, "But why should poems rhyme?" And I can imagine his answer, "Little miss, it's like playing tennis without a net!" Hahaha!

"Mending Wall" is a multilayered and self conscious argument for the net, for the rules, for the form. Oh! But rules are meant to be broken! He reminds me that rules must be learned before they can be broken. That I can appreciate.

I like how he makes the cause of the broken wall so mysterious: "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." And then he links this to "elves" which he also quickly dismisses. I like how that is also metapoetic and universal. It's metapoetic because he is living at a time when the "wall" of structured poetry is being broken left and right by poets he does not like (Stein, for one). It is also universal because any kind of structure is always being broken down by chaos. It's a constant struggle: order and chaos. Frost makes the argument for order but he creates the false binary of order versus chaos.

Did the speaker agree to "good fences make good neighbors"? The speaker points out that the neighbor in the poem is not aware of its significance, repeating only what he has been told. The speaker, of course, is not as dim and has thought this over. He repeats the phrase. I have no doubt the speaker is advocating this phrase. It is clear from his self-conscious choice of honoring the tradition of mending the wall. I read this on two levels. The first being, good structure makes good poets. It is in recognizing and keeping to the boundaries that the good poet, the good human being is at the height of his humanity. The second being, boundaries define human interaction. There are no human interactions if there are no boundaries. I agree on the second (more than the first) that boundaries have their role in any interaction.

There are many other facets outside the order that Frost recommends. Yes, there is a classical elegance to the form that he chooses. However, the first world war (and then the second) has left the world in such fragmentation that classical elegance no longer applies. For something to grow, it must leave its boundaries. The cell cannot be in stasis, biologically speaking.

I appreciate, too, what Frost is saying about the wall: it will always be broken. It takes a certain kind of effort to continuously mend the wall. It says something about the cyclical nature of humanity as well. There will always be a struggle to break free...but at some point, that "breaking free" will become a tradition in itself which will again be broken.

This brings me back to canon, to Pound (and criticism), and to ars poetica. Like any piece of art (which may not have been considered "art" during its time), the poem captures the scent, the shape, the image, the structure of its times. And definitely, Frost captured an aspect and an argument of ars poetica. "Mending Wall," I'm sure, was his response to imagism. I hold this up as part of the prism of poetry. It is multifaceted, multicultural and always engaging. I hope to capture as much as I can of the variety and richness of the voices I hear out of ModPo.

ModPo 2013 #23 Familiarity and Alienation: On Stein's "A Long Dress"

Dress pattern image from www.prudentbaby.com.

Gertrude Stein's "A Long Dress" from Tender Buttons

A LONG DRESS.

What is the current that makes machinery, that makes it crackle, what is the current that presents a long line and a necessary waist. What is this current.

What is the wind, what is it.

Where is the serene length, it is there and a dark place is not a dark place, only a white and red are black, only a yellow and green are blue, a pink is scarlet, a bow is every color. A line distinguishes it. A line just distinguishes it. 

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I was given fair warning in the introduction to week 4 (Chapter 2.3). Gertrude Stein is difficult. Yes, she is.

I see that there is a first literal reading: the making of a dress, the industry of making a dress, the constraints of making a dress. Around the industry of making a dress is this thing called fashion that has something to do with what is current, with colors that are meant for certain seasons and collections or lines designed for what is fashionable. The line that "distinguishes" it (presumably the long dress) could mean the fashion line (or the collection) or perhaps it's the line in the pattern of the dress.

Then, there is a second layer of meaning, a "reference," that calls on the meta-poetic or consciousness of the poem as the process of writing poetry or making meaning itself. The "line" in the poem now refers to the long line of tradition. "Current" now has something to do with what is modern, what is "new" versus what is traditional or from the "long line" of tradition. Now the manufacture of dress now refers to the manufacture of literature, of poetry, to the manufacture of meaning. If I didn't watch the video discussion, I wouldn't have made the connection at all. Maybe a hint to all this would have been the repetition of "lines" at the end of the poem, "A line distinguishes it. A/ line just distinguishes it."

There are other unexplained lines in the poem that are intruiging/ confusing like the absence of question marks, the reference to the wind which I don't associate with the a long dress. There is the reference to a dark place that is not a dark place. How is this related to the long dress? And why should a white and a red be a black? How is a yellow and green a blue? How is pink scarlet? And how does this "bow" have every color? Is she saying that a history, a tradition makes it possible for "dark places" to disappear? Are the first set of colors referring to skin color? What about the second set of colors? Everyone knows that yellow and blue make green so why is she inverting it? And what about pink being scarlet? Is pink referring to nakedness and scarlet referring to the scarlet letter? Bow definitely refers to rainbow. But at this point, what does it have to do with anything? Is it the bow at the waist? The ultimate constraint? I really have no idea.

I wanted to enjoy the poem, I really did. But the thing is...it's too wide open. Maybe that was her point? She used familiar words and familiar constructions but did it in such a way that the reader would not really recognize them after all? What is the difference between art and random words strung together? I know that the construction of the poem was effortful. But what if the result is too alienating? Dickinson's poems, while adhering to creating puzzles out of language, were familiar enough to start with so that I could be engaged as a reader. For example, gathering Paradise in one's narrow hands is not direct nor prosaic but, at the same time, it is pointing to something familiar enough so that the reader has a clue. Maybe there might be multiple interpretations but we are given Paradise contrasted with narrow hands and there is something that can definitely be made out of that.

So, for now, I'll not make any conclusions yet. I'll just keep going through Stein for the week and see what happens.

Note: I am currently taking a course on Coursera.org called Modern and Contemporary American Poetry taught by Al Filreis of the University of Pennsylvania. I will be posting my thoughts on the course discussions here.

ModPo 2013 #21 What Poetry Depends Upon: On Williams' "The Red Wheel Barrow"

Image from
girlsjustwannareadbooks.blogspot.com.

The Red Wheelbarrow

by William Carlos Williams 

so much depends 

upon 

a red wheel 

barrow 

glazed with rain 

water 

beside the white 

chickens.
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Once again, I'm glad to have watched the video discussion. So much depends upon the phrase "So much depends/ upon!" I would have totally missed it!

I loved how the image itself became dependent on the awareness of making something new, the meta-poetic. It could easily have stood as a crisp imagist poem but the first two lines draw attention to themselves. Are they superfluous? Why does so much depend upon a red wheel barrow? So much of art depends upon something, the lenses that detect the picture, the artist from whose perspective we see the red wheel barrow. 

This brings me to the beauty of language. There is never really just one way to look at things. As Wallace Stevens points out: there are at least thirteen ways to see a blackbird. A red wheel barrow is not just a red wheel barrow, not just the one glazed with rain water contrasted beside the white chickens. So much depends on the speaker, so much depends on the reader. The red wheel barrow is the pastoral life. The red wheel barrow is what is left of the pastoral life. The red wheel barrow shines with rain water because the rain water makes all things new. The red wheel barrow is the speaker and the reader. Or the reader and the speaker are the white chickens. And without the red wheel barrow the speaker and reader do not come into view. 

It's amazing how much can come out of a few photographic lines. Poetry depends upon traditions and innovations.  It makes me want to review all my poems and see how innovative I have been or how inarticulate or unaware I really am about the sources of my poetry.