post the thirty-eighth, 2013

so. read 500 lines of poetry, eh?

last week i finished reading a collection of the works of robert frost and here's what i have to say about the collected works of robert frost: that man had like one and a half solid pieces of poetry in him. thalia wept!

20 or so lines per page. 100 or so pages. 2000 lines? what? ridiculous. seemed more like 2 million.

okay, so here are a few highlights.

It's when i'm weary of considerations,/ And life is too much like a pathless wood.

i marked this in part because one of frost's most famous poems (the one good one) is about choosing between two paths in a wood. so you can see that paths in the wood carry meaning for this man. in this bit, he's saying that when he's tired of being a grownup and life is confusing, he wants to get away and swing in the trees.


One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

this line ends the pathless woods poem. you know, he's tired of living in a house and whatnot. now, that's a good line. understated.


...resurrected tree,/ A tree that had been down and raised again--/ A barkless spectre...

this is a description of... a telegraph pole. sweet! nice imagery there.


But if you shrink from being scared,/ What would you say to war if it should come?

this line comes in the middle of a poem about a bonfire. he's talking to his children about burning a brush pile collected up on the hill, and how a large, almost out-of-control fire would scare the neighbors. the children ask, would it scare him, too, and he says why wouldn't it? why wouldn't it? and they go on to ask, "if it scares you, what will it do to us?" "scare you." he says. "but if you shrink from being scared, what would you say to war if it should come?"


Something there is that doesn't love a wall,/ That wants it down.

fairly self-explanatory, eh? concise, yet loaded. good one, mr frost.


dear me, why abandon a belief/ Merely because it ceases to be true?

hey, now. that's pretty funny right there.


Who cares what they say? It's a nice way to live,/ Just taking what Nature is willing to give, /Not forcing her hand with harrow and plow."

yes. i concur, mr frost.


But I am done with apple-picking now.

ah... yes. yes, you are, mr frost... yes, you are.