NP but Cornell, Ithaca, A.A. Ammons and Abrams' "Natural Supernaturalism". Only if interested, otherwise a probable waste of your time.

[Jochen Stremmel]

Apropos Frost, there's a nice impersonation of him in Tobias Wolff's Old
School. (He comes to a prep school, reads some of his poems, November 1960,
shortly after the election campaign; English teacher asks if stanza form,
iambic lines connected by rhyme are still "adequate to express the modern
consciousness".)

Modern consciousness, Frost said. What's that?

Ah! Good question, sir. Well—very roughly speaking, I would describe it as
the mind's response to industrialization, the saturation propaganda of
governments and advertisers, two world wars, the concentration camp, the
dimming of faith by science, and, of course, the constant threat of
annihilation. Surely these things have had an effect on us. Surely they
have changed our thinking.

Surely nothing, Frost said. He stared down at Mr. Ramsey. Don't tell me
about science, he went on. I'm something of a scientist myself. Botany. You
boys know what tropism is? That's what makes a plant grow toward the light.
Everything aspires to the light. You don't have to chase down a fly to get
rid of it—you just darken the room and leave a crack of light in a window,
and out he goes. Works every time. We all have that instinct . . . that
aspiration. Science can't—what was the word? dim?—science can't dim that.
All science can do is turn out the false lights in the room so the true
light can get us home.

Mr. Ramsey began to say something, but Frost kept going. So don't tell me
about science, he said, and don't tell me about war. I lost my nearest
friend in the one they call the Great War. So did Achilles lose his friend
in war, and Homer did no injustice to his grief by writing about it in
dactylic hexameters. There've always been wars, and they've always been as
foul as we could make them. It is very fine and pleasant to think ourselves
the most put-upon folk in history, but then everyone has thought that from
the beginning—it makes a grand excuse for all manner of laziness. But about
my friend. I wrote a poem for him. I still write poems for him. Would you
honor your own friend by putting words down anyhow, just as they come to
you—no thought for the sound they make, the meaning of their sound, the
sound of their meaning?

He broke off and let his eyes roam over the room.

I am thinking of Achilles' grief, he said. That famous grief . . . that
terrible grief. Let me tell you boys something. Such grief can only be told
in form. Maybe it only really exists in form. Form is everything. Without
it you've got nothing but a stubbed-toe sort of cry, sincere maybe, for
what that's worth, but with no depth or carry. No echo. You may have a
grievance, but you don't have grief, and grievances are for petitions, not
poetry. Does that answer your question?

Am Di., 1. Jan. 2019 um 17:20 Uhr schrieb Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>:

> I could feel nature ala Frost (but he's off as a
> comparison) and some ideas thrown off by it---here is one: he has a great
> line somewhere else scoring post-modernists and post-structuralists and
> other thinkers in that vein---and I'm sure this is not exact, but the way I
> project my memory of it ----" I'll debate "reality' with any post-modernist
> while they help me try to start my car at minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit
> because I need medicine for my child".
>
> --
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>