 |
| Photo by the author at the Cleveland Flats, 1984 |
On that old side of the houseThe uneven sheds stretch backShed behind shed in trainLike cars that long have lainDead on a side track.
~Robert Frost (January 1918)
The whole poem is here and the backstory is here
A comment at the second link:
'He [Frost] is remembered as a folksy poet who wrote in traditional forms, unlike all those experimentalists running amok at the time.' Whereas he ought to be remembered as a deceptively folksy poet who used traditional forms to say non-folksy things.
15 comments:
As far as WWI is concerned, it's fortunate we were only in combat about 4 months for we insisted on making every stupid mistake the Frawgs and the Limeys (and the Hun) made for 4 years.
Choom will try to make this a lead from his behind war, like Labia, but it remains to be seen how it turns out.
Given his track record, it might be a good idea if the NSA stopped spying on Americans and started worrying about terrorists again.
All Children Are Terrorists if You Do It Right.
It is Time We Used the Correct Name: Chelsea Frost.
Seven references at Urban Dictionary are very similarly close to each others meaning of Chelsea.
The last one is way off, when compared to the first seven.
Totally Roberta Andrew Frost-Sullivanist.
I like it, but not as much as this:
'We thought we were done with these things but we were wrong
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom. We thought the long train would run to the end of Time.
We thought the light would increase.
Now the long train stands derailed and the bandits loot it.
Now the boar and the asp have power in our time.
Now the night rolls back on the West and the night is solid.
Our fathers and ourselves sowed dragon's teeth.
Our children know and suffer the armed men.'
Frost is always withdrawing, holding back. I'm not a fan of minimalism, I'd prefer the poet to over-commit and go overboard with his imagery. If you want to be naturalistic and terse, write prose - poetry is about Too Much.
@Mitch H: Thank you for adding that!
On the back side of the house
Where it wears no paint to the weather
And so shows most its age,
Suddenly blue jays rage
And flash in blue feather.
It is late in an afternoon
More grey with snow to fall
Than white with fallen snow
When it is blue jay and crow
Or no bird at all.
So someone heeds from within
This flurry of bird war,
And rising from her chair
A little bent over with care
Not to scatter on the floor
The sewing in her lap
Comes to the window to see.
At sight of her dim face
The birds all cease for a space
And cling close in a tree.
And one says to the rest
?We must just watch our chance
And escape one by one?
Though the fight is no more done
Than the war is in France.?
Than the war is in France!
She thinks of a winter camp
Where soldiers for France are made.
She draws down the window shade
And it glows with an early lamp.
On that old side of the house
The uneven sheds stretch back
Shed behind shed in train
Like cars that long have lain
Dead on a side track.
Poems are funny. Sometimes you read through and go 'meh.' Then after a couple more reads you are captured.
I question two interpretations made by the person in the second link:
"Storage sheds spot the landscape behind a house."
"A few of the birds are talking among themselves in a tree. They discuss going AWOL -- flying off, one by one, even though their battle is no more finished than the one under way in France."
I think the shed configuration is where the farmer kept adding onto the previous shed.
The birds going AWOL, I question in two ways. Is the 'winter camp
where soldiers for France are made' a POW camp (did they have those in WWI?) from which they want to escape or could the 'escape one by one' mean escape by being killed in action or by suicide?
I think you're right about the shed metaphor.
The birds aren't thinking of AWOL so much as perhaps regrouping elsewhere to avoid the gaze of the human.
BTW, did you notice the weeds growing in the flat car bed? I called that photo "weed train."
No, I hadn't. That's a marvelous photo to put with this poem.
The photo was taken in late winter/early spring 1984, somewhere in the Cleveland Flats. That's the Cuyahoga River just barely visible.
Those are your photographs, Chick? I was going to ask.
They're really beautiful. Poetic.
Yes, they are yashu, and thanks. You might like this photo of a bridge I took the same day: link
Really like that one too. I think we might have a similar photographic sensibility. Didn't know you were a photographer (not by trade but by passion), too. Is it an avocation you still practice/ pursue?
Anyway, I encourage you to post more of your photos on occasion, if you feel like it; I'd enjoy it.
Post a Comment