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Robert Frost; William Carlos Williams; Edna St. Vincent Milay

Robert Frost Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Robert_Frost_NYWTS.jpg

William Carlos Williams 1920 Image from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/William_Carlos_Williams_passport_photograph.jpg/220px-William_Carlos_Williams_passport_photograph.jpg

Edna St. Vincent Milay
Image from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Edna_St._Vincent_Millay.jpg

Terms | Life | Times | Class Discussion | Group Questions | Links | Pictures | Quotes from Critics

Terms to Know
modernism    Generally, any movement or climate of ideas, especially in the arts, literature, or architecture, that supports change, the retirement of the old or traditional, and the forward march of the avant-garde. More specifically, adherence to the ideas and ideals of the Enlightenment . This is the sense that gives rise to the contrary movement of postmodernism.

"modernism"   The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy . Simon Blackburn. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online . Oxford University Press.  Ocean County College.  6 March 2009

modernism: A general term applied retrospectively to the wide range of experimental and avant-garde trends in the literature (and other arts) of the early 20th century, including Symbolism , Futurism , Expressionism , Imagism , Vorticism , Ultraismo , Dada , and Surrealism , along with the innovations of unaffiliated writers. Modernist literature is characterized chiefly by a rejection of 19th-century traditions and of their consensus between author and reader: the conventions of realism , for instance, were abandoned by Franz Kafka and other novelists, and by expressionist drama, while several poets rejected traditional metres in favour of free verse . Modernist writers tended to see themselves as an avant-garde disengaged from bourgeois values, and disturbed their readers by adopting complex and difficult new forms and styles. In fiction, the accepted continuity of chronological development was upset by Joseph Conrad , Marcel Proust , and William Faulkner , while James Joyce and Virginia Woolf attempted new ways of tracing the flow of characters' thoughts in their stream-of-consciousness styles. In poetry, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot replaced the logical exposition of thoughts with collages of fragmentary images and complex allusions . Luigi Pirandello and Bertolt Brecht opened up the theatre to new forms of abstraction in place of realist and naturalist representation.

Modernist writing is predominantly cosmopolitan, and often expresses a sense of urban cultural dislocation, along with an awareness of new anthropological and psychological theories. Its favoured techniques of juxtaposition and multiple point of view challenge the reader to reestablish a coherence of meaning from fragmentary forms. In English, its major landmarks are Joyce's Ulysses and Eliot's The Waste Land (both 1922 ). In Hispanic literature the term has a special sense: modernismo denotes the new style of poetry in Spanish from 1888 to c .1910 , strongly influenced by the French Symbolists and Parnassians and introduced by the Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario and the Mexican poet Manuel Gutierrez Najera . For a fuller account, consult Peter Childs , Modernism (2nd edn, 2007 ).

"modernism."  The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms . Chris Baldick. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online . Oxford University Press.  Ocean County College.  6 March 2009

Imagism: poetic movement of England and the United States, flourished from 1909 to 1917. Its credo, expressed in Some Imagist Poets (1915), included the use of the language of common speech, precision, the creation of new rhythms, absolute freedom in choice of subject matter, the evocation of images in hard, clear poetry, and concentration. Originating in the aesthetic philosophy of T. E. Hulme, the movement soon attracted Ezra Pound, who became the leader of a small group opposed to the romantic conception of poetry and inspired by Greek and Roman classics and by Chinese, Japanese, and modern French poets. In the U.S., the group was represented in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse by Pound, H. D., John Gould Fletcher, and Amy Lowell, and by such English poets as F. S. Flint, Richard Aldington, and D. H. Lawrence. Pound collected some of their work in Des Imagistes: An Anthology (1914), after which his interest began to wane; Amy Lowell then assumed active leadership, advocating that the group subscribe to a fixed program and hold together for at least three years. Under her guidance were published several anthologies, all entitled Some Imagist Poets.

"Imagism." The Concise Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart. Oxford University Press, 1986. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Ocean County College. 10 March 2009

For a more thorough overview, see Scott Ashley "Imagism and American Poets"   The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature . Jay Parini. Oxford University Press 2004. Oxford Reference Online . Oxford University Press. 

Sonnet: A lyric poem comprising fourteen rhyming lines of equal length: iambic pentameters in English, alexandrines in French, hendecasyllables in Italian. The rhyme schemes of the sonnet follow two basic patterns.

1. The Italian sonnet (also called the Petrarchan sonnet after the most influential of the Italian sonneteers) comprises an 8 line ‘octave’ of two quatrains , rhymed abbaabba, followed by a 6 line ‘sestet’ usually rhymed cdecde or cdcdcd. The transition from octave to sestet usually coincides with a ‘turn’ (Italian, volta) in the argument or mood of the poem. In a variant form used by the English poet John Milton , however, the ‘turn’ is delayed to a later position around the tenth line. Some later poets—notably William Wordsworth —have employed this feature of the ‘Miltonic sonnet’ while relaxing the rhyme scheme of the octave to abbaacca. The Italian pattern has remained the most widely used in English and other languages.

2. The English sonnet (also called the Shakespearean sonnet after its foremost practitioner) comprises three quatrains and a final couplet, rhyming ababcdcdefefgg. An important variant of this is the Spenserian sonnet (introduced by the Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser ), which links the three quatrains by rhyme, in the sequence ababbabccdcdee. In either form, the ‘turn’ comes with the final couplet, which may sometimes achieve the neatness of an epigram . Originating in Italy, the sonnet was established by Petrarch in the 14th century as a major form of love poetry, and came to be adopted in Spain, France, and England in the 16th century, and in Germany in the 17th. The standard subject matter of early sonnets was the torments of sexual love (usually within a courtly love convention), but in the 17th century John Donne extended the sonnet's scope to religion, while Milton extended it to politics. Although largely neglected in the 18th century, the sonnet was revived in the 19th by Wordsworth, Keats, and Baudelaire, and is still widely used. Some poets have written connected series of sonnets, known as sonnet sequences or sonnet cycles: of these, the outstanding English examples are Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella (1591), Spenser's Amoretti (1595), and Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609); later examples include Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) and W. H. Auden's ‘In Time of War’ (1939). A group of sonnets formally linked by repeated lines is known as a crown of sonnets. Irregular variations on the sonnet form have included the 12 line sonnet sometimes used by Elizabethan poets, G. M. Hopkins's curtal sonnets of 101/2 lines, and the 16 line sonnets of George Meredith's sequence Modern Love (1862). For an extended introductory account, consult John Fuller, The Sonnet (1972).

http://www.sonnets.org Sonnet Central: archive of sonnets with historical notes and links.

"sonnet." The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Chris Baldick. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Ocean County College. 4 March 2009

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The Life
Paris Review interview with Frost
Paris Review interview with Williams

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The Times 

It's difficult to understand the radicalism of these poets verse unless you compare it with the popular poetry of the period.  And so, a sampling from  Anthology of Newspaper Verse 1919, purporting to show "those poems which seemed to voice the sentiment of the people."  And now, without further ado, the voice of the people. (in PDF for easier reading)

A LITTLE WHILE.

Hope on, and bid thy soul look up and wait a little while,
       Thy share of joy He holds for thee, though now the world looks dark.
He guides thy bark to seas where thou shalt find thy happy isle.
       The darkest hour comes just before the dawn then sings the lark!

Boston (Mass.) Record. Marie Tello Phillips.

ALIENS.

Columbia, Columbia, they came across the sea
To till your golden prairies and to dwell in amity.
They planted friendly orchards; and from East to fertile West
Their little ones in gladness knew the shielding of your breast.

Columbia, Columbia, another brood is here,
Who snatch your love and treasure, and requite you with a sneer,
Like snakes they glide in darkness, foul as ghouls that haunt the dead
And yield no glad allegiance, save to bloody flags of red.

Awake, arise, Columbia! Their dream is all too long --
Call forth your sons of alien race, their arms are leal and strong.

Fling out the starry flag again, as in our battle day.
While sons who once were aliens sweep the poisoned hordes away!

Luella Stewart.
New York (N. Y.) Evening Sun.

THE GARDEN OF THE HEART.

When the springtime is advancing
     With its warm and glowing showers,
When you're planting in your garden
     Of the various kinds of flowers
You are careful, oh, so careful,
     That the seed will surely start,
Just take an extra moment
     For the garden of the heart.

Heart-gardens are oft-times barren
    Of the sunshine, warmth and cheer;
Just moisten up the calloused places
    With a sympathetic tear,
'Twill start the germ of love to growing,
    Smother out the hurts that smart,
If you plant a little flower
    In the garden of the heart.

South Bend (Ind.) Tribune, Matt. O. Long.

YESTERDAY AND TOMORROW.

Oh, where, my heart, is the peace you knew
When winds were fair and skies were blue?
You then were young, and your throb was light,
And the future of love and vision was bright.

Red horror descended and men went mad
Fair fields with millions of slain were clad.
The beauty of centuries all in a breath
Went hurtling away on the pinions of death.

Be strong, my heart! 'tis a world of change,
And struggles of Man have long wide range !
Though the darkness fell, gun again shall rise
And courage re-glisten in human eyes.

Unity (Chicago, HI.) James Hareourt West.

DESTINY.

Each day unwinds the roll of fate,
  New pictures shown, by artist time
Who frames them later to relate
  Our life in full a tale sublime.

When symbols print through souls of thought
  And varied colors blend as one,
Recalling sunny hours forgot,
  Through years of toil and duties dark.

As fate unwinds life's web, we weave
  The hit and miss together show
Effects whose consequences grieve
  To pains that balance all we owe.

An Angel travels with each one
  Accounts to keep its time to wait
All claims when earth's demands are done
  Unfurlment at the golden gate.

Eager to find our longings met
  By charity the queen of love,
Where mysteries our tears have wet,
  On earth to bloom our joys above.

Buffalo Express Mary J. Scott.

FINIS.

Let this grand old earth resound with mirth,
  For the sword is laid aside :
Strife is done, our victory's won,
  Let joy and peace abide;
For God has blessed our efforts
  And our eagle's wings are furled
O'er the freedom of all mankind
  And a liberated world.

Now the waves of the sea roll proud and free
  Far o'er the bounding main,
The ships that bear our heroes dear
  Come sailing home again;
And back once more from a distant shore,
  Thrice welcome will they be.
For hard they've toiled to make the world
  Safe for democracy.

And though there's some who 're left behind,
  Their cross and crown are won;
Well bow our heads to Heaven's decree
  And say "Thy will be done";
For o'er the paths of toil and pain,
  Their willing feet have trod,
They've climbed the height, they're "over the top,"
  And safe in the arms of God.

Mobile (Ala.) Register. Agnes Weeks Chambers.

DEEP IN THE HEART.

Deep in the heart O such a sweetness lies,
There is no room for anything of care,
Of bitterness or sorrow or despair,

In just this little bit of paradise.
What dear remembrances are our to prize,
To cherish ever and to hold most fair,
The little things of life we give and share!
Deep in the heart are endless melodies.

Deep in the heart are joy and peace and rest
So rich and sweet no tongue can ever tell
The precious whole or speak it utterly,
With faith to bring us to the harbor blest
Of hopes and dreams and say that all is well
But love, Love only holds the golden key.

Detroit Free Press. Myrtella Southerland.

THE UNMOWN HIGHWAY.

I love the unmown highway where the crimson sumachs blaze,
And the golden-rods run riot in their dear familiar ways;
Where grapevines drape the fences, and the bittersweet is seen
Glossily upon the sapling, while below, -- beneath -- between

Peep the saucy Spanish needles with their countless cups of gold,
Each one filled with as much nectar as any bee should hold:
Oh, the air is full of incense and a chorus sweet and rare
All along the unmown highway with its 'dear sweet wild things there.

There are fragrant apples falling, tiny, hard, and round and green
From the crab-tree that in Maytime was the pinkest, sweetest seen:
And the grapevines purple bunches take us back to spring-time, too,
When its' mignonette sweet blossoms wafted out their fragrance new.

And the tiny wrens and bluebirds, flitting, darting, to and fro,
Sounded timid notes of warning ; did they take me for a foe?
And the thrush, I hear her"tushing"to her eager, hungry brood,
While afar her mate swung, thrilling, his own anthem to the Wood.

In Midsummer the wild roses nestled there in sweet repose,
Shy, sweet, modest, perfect darlings of the dear unkempt hedgerows.
Where the thorn-tree snowed its' blossoms on Sweet Williams down below
And in fall the purple asters sway on all the winds that blow.

Oh, I love an unmown highway with a hedgerow hanging o'er;
There are scarlet leaves in autumn, flowers and fruit have gone before;
There we found the sweet wild berries in the shade of noon-tide heat;
Some may call such road-sides shiftless, but to me they are just sweet!

Home Life, Chicago, Ill. Pearl Haley Patrick.

Even Williams was not immune to this embrace of an older "poetics."  His first, self-published book of poetry (1909), contains the following:

"On a Proposed Trip South" 

They tell me on the morrow I must leave
This winter eyrie for a southern flight
And truth to tell I tremble with delight
At thought of such unheralded reprieve.

E'er have I known December in a weave
Of blanched crystal, when, thrice one short night
Packed full with magic, and O blissful sight!
N'er May so warmly doth for April grieve.

To in a breath's space wish the winter through
And lo, to see it fading! Where, oh, where
Is caract could endow this princely boon?

Yet I have found it and shall shortly view
The lush high grasses, shortly see in air
Gay birds and hear the bees make heavy droon.

His (and our) friend  Ezra Pound did not look kindly on this kind of poetry.  The first line of a 1909 letter in response to the book wa:  "I hope to God you have no feelings. If you have, burn this before reading."  

He added "Individual, original it is not. Great art it is not. Poetic it is, but there are innumerable poetic volumes poured out here in Gomorrah [London] .... Your book would not attract even passing attention here. There are fine lines in it, but nowhere I think do you add anything to the poets you have used as models."

Williams was a quick study.  By 1914, his verse looked like this

"To Mark Antony in Heaven"

This quiet morning light
reflected, how many times
from grass and tress and clouds
enters my north room
touching the walls with
grass and clouds and trees.
Anthony,
trees and grass and clouds.
Why did you follow
that beloved body
with your ships at Actium?
I hope it was because
you knew her inch by inch
from slanting feet upward
to the roots of her hair
and down again and that
you saw her
above the battle's fury ---
clouds and trees and grass ---

For then you are
listening in heaven.

This more modern verse was much more appealing to Pound: he published it in his 1914 anthology Des Imagistes.

Link to "Ars Poetica" by Archibald Macleish 

(The comments on Williams' poetry are from
Cooper, John Xiros. "William Carlos Williams." American Poets, 1880-1945: Third Series. Ed. Peter Quartermain. Detroit: Gale Research, 1987. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 54. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Mar. 2013.)

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Class Discussion

• What does Father Time have to do with this poem?

"Mending Wall"

• What's the difference between the speaker and his neighbor?
• How is the neighbor characterized?
• Who wants the wall? Why or why not?
• Why end this rather long poem with the neighbor's voice? (not a sonnet or other closed form -- could end anywhere)

"Home Burial"

"After Apple Picking"

"The Road Not Taken"

"Birches"

"Design"

This is an early version of this poem, first published in 1922

In White
A dented spider like a snow drop white
On a white Heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of lifeless satin cloth -
Saw ever curious eye so strange a sight? -
Portent in little, assorted death and blight
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth? -
The beady spider, the flower like a froth,
And the moth carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The blue prunella every child's delight.
What brought the kindred spider to that height?
(Make we no thesis of the miller's plight.)
What but design of darkness and of night?
Design, design! Do I use the word aright?

And consider Blake's Tyger Tyger as well -- which seems an earlier evocation of the same theme

William Carlos Williams (circa 1920s)

"The Red Wheelbarrow"

"This is Just to Say"

"Spring and All"

"The Young Housewife"

• Why young?
• Why 10 AM?
• Why so many men?
• Why fallen leaves at the end?
• Why do the wheels go over them?

"Landscape with the Fall of Icarus"

This is the Brueghel's painting refered to in the poem

From: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/Bruegel%2C_Pieter_de_Oude_-_De_val_van_icarus_-_hi_res.jpg/800px-Bruegel%2C_Pieter_de_Oude_-_De_val_van_icarus_-_hi_res.jpg

"Queen-Anne's-Lace"

• Why "lace"? Why not another flower?
• How does this poem suggest sexuality?
• Williams once remarked that this poem concerns "Flossie" -- his wife. How could this poem a poem to a wife? What is he "saying" about the relationship?

Consider Shakespeare's sonnet "My Mistress's Eyes" in relation to this poem

Edna St. Vincent Milay circa 1920s

• Does Milay's view of the word and of poetry differ from Robinson, Frost, and Williams?

"I, being born a woman"

"Apostrophe to Man"

"I Too beneath Your Moon, Almighty Sex"

"The Snow Storm"

Click on the link for a copy of an early poem by Milay -- and one of her best: Renascence. I find it reminiscent of our friend Edna Pontieller.

Views of Women and Sexuality

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Group Questions

1. What religious images/metaphors/symbols are there in "After Apple-Picking"? Why include them?
2. Who does the title of "Home Burial" refer to? (careful here . . . ) use quotes to support your reading please. How does this poem illustrate the idea of alienation in Frost's poetry?
3. How does Frost's poetry illustrate mutability? Who accepts it in his poems -- who does not?
4. In "The Figure a Poem Makes," Frost writes that a poem "ends in a clarification of life -- not necessarily a great clarification [. . .] but in a momentary stay against confusion" (1409). Choose one of his poems, and "figure" out its clarification. And of course, offer quotes and explanations of how that "momentary stay against confusion" is portrayed in poem.
5. How is his work connected to E. A. Robinson? Make specific connections please.
6. Philip Gerber identifies one of Frost's main themes as "The precise relationship of man to his fellows [ . . . .] As a strong advocate of individualism, Frost saw man as learning from nature the zones of his own limitations. Within these naturally imposed boundaries, man struggles to achieve whatever he might with whatever talents he has been granted. Conversely, Frost saw man as achieving little so long as he considers only himself, isolated from those around him. At the best, this preoccupation leads to egocentrism; at its worst, to lonely madness."

Do you see this as one of Frost's themes? How so? Which poems express this and how?

Group Questions Williams/Milay

1. One critic, focusing on Williams' view of women, argues

   Williams suggests that, for male writers [ . . . ] beauty [. . .] is culturally appropriated by men for their poetry via the mechanism of "the gaze" (Mulvey 1989). This polemical concept of gaze, [raises two contradictory points: the] voyeuristic investigation/demystification of the female figure, and overvaluation of the figure turned into a fetish. Williams in general demystifies women, a tough-minded, realist strategy, but the possessive and appropriative aspects of "poesy" intermingle with demystification in a poem such as "The Young Housewife" (1916). (Duplessis)

Do you see both woman as sex object (fetish) and a demystification of such a view in the poem?

2. Williams wrote that "The poem, to me (until I go broke) is an attempt, an experiment, a failing experiment, toward assertion with broken means but an assertion, always, of a new and total culture, the lifting of an environment to expression. Thus it is social, the poem is a social instrument." Do you see this social nature in his poetry? How so?
3. Linda Wagner-Martin writes that Williams

   presented [. . .] images unapologetically. His purpose was not to point a moral or teach a lesson; rather, he wanted his readers to see through his eyes the beauty of the real. He was content to rest with the assumption that the reader could duplicate [his] own sense of importance of red wheelbarrows and the green glass between hospital walls, and thereby dismiss the need for symbolism. As he said succinctly in Paterson, "no ideas but in things."

Do you see this idea of presenting images themselves in his work? Do you think such an approach works? Do the ideas come from the things?

4. Does Milay's view of the world and of poetry differ from Robinson, Frost, and Williams? Proof please.
5. How is the speaker of "I, being born a woman" similar to our friend Enda Pontellier?

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Links

Frost page on the Modern American Poetry site (one of the best for . . . Modern American Poetry . . .) Short but detailed biographies and critical commentary on selected poems.

Williams page on the Modern American Poetry site.

Milay page on the Modern American Poetry site.

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Pictures, Pictures, Pictures

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Quotes from Critics

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© David Bordelon 2009