When Library of America asked Jay Parini to write a book on the poetry of Robert Frost, they chose the right person. Parini, the D.E. Axinn Professor of English and Creative Writing at Middlebury College in Vermont, is a Frost scholar, though not simply because he has studied the life and poetry of the poet, or because he has written his biography. Parini’s relationship with Frost is much deeper than that.
“I think that everything I know about life I learned from Robert Frost and from reading his poems,” Parini told me. It was a statement I didn’t expect. But, for me, that statement clarified why in his new book, “Robert Frost: Sixteen Poems to Learn by Heart,” he calls Frost “our guide.”
Library of America had initially requested a book on 12 of Frost’s poems. Parini, however, believed the task could not be accomplished with so few. Like an old leather map, there was a chronology to Frost’s life and his poems that needed to be unfolded and followed. There were seasons in Frost’s life that required exploration. “The philosophical and spiritual depths explored in these poems are astonishing, often plumbing the darker sides of human existence,” Parini wrote in his book.
‘Seasons of the Skin’
Of course, these “philosophical and spiritual depths” are not solely about our darker sides. Frost’s poems can guide us through every season of our life, if we take the time to read them, set them to memory, and keep them nestled in the corners of our minds.
“There is no season where Frost is not a poet of that season,” Parini said. “He’s a great winter poet, it’s true. Many of those great snow poems are death poems. But the spring poems are rebirth poems, and he has so many great poems there, like ‘Spring Pools.’ Then he’s a summer poet. And he’s a fall poet, ‘Oh hushed October morning mild.’ They’re never just dates on the calendar. They are always seasons of a life. Frost tracked the seasons and the seasons of the skin. His poems are all about the evanescence of life and how it passes, how it fades, but also how it is renewed again.”
At 76 years old, Parini has long set these poems to memory. They are there for his present and his future, just as they have been there for his past, helping him understand the seasons of his own life.
The Intellectual Everyman Poet
Robert Frost has been called a farmer poet, a folk poet, an intellectual poet, a naturalist poet, and a Romantic poet. Indeed, he has been a poet for all people at all times. A true poet for all seasons. This is why, more than a century after his first published collection of poems and more than half a century since his death, Robert Frost still transfixes us.
Parini explained that Frost was classically trained at Harvard and Dartmouth, studying the works of Theocritus, Horace, Virgil, and Shakespeare. He could read and write in Greek and Latin. All of that literary knowledge came out in his poetry, yet in the most subtle of ways.
“Frost doesn’t wear his learning on his shirtsleeves. Frost is a man of the people with a deep intellectual edge to him,” Parini said. “He knew exactly where to find that balance.”
It is why, as Parini wrote in his book, “Frost is often—too often—misread as a sweet homespun philosopher, a kind of folk poet.” Of course, this persona was created and presented on purpose. Frost never wanted to intimidate his readers, Parini claimed. At the same time, this “folk poet” persona was an accurate representation. Frost was a man of the people and a man of the earth. He didn’t just use his hands to write poetry; he used his hands to work the land, which explains why rural imagery played so prominently in his work.
A Response to Our Confusion
Frost uses nature to frame the human experience. The poet had a gift for connecting people with the earth and the earth with his poetry. As Parini indicated, Frost divided life into seasons—from the birth of spring to the death of winter. The American poet wasn’t merely reflecting life in the seasons; he was reflecting the seasons of his life. Peering into Frost’s personal life, one sees tragedy at nearly every turn, from the death of his children and wife to placing his sister and daughter into mental institutions. It seemed the poet experienced winter more than any other season. And Frost was never hesitant to invite his readers into those winter storms, requiring them to contemplate life’s harsh realities.
Poems and Prayers
For these reasons Parini believes we should set to memory the poems of Robert Frost. He believes that Frost will do for us what the poet has done for him—be our guide for every season. But as noted earlier, these poems do not just plumb the philosophical depths, but the spiritual too. He believes that poems, good poems—poems that possess “intellectual, moral, and artistic strength”—are prayers.“They are kind of a divine utterance. An attempt to speak to the universe, speak to God, whatever you think is your ultimate concern,” Parini said. “What are the Scriptures, but essentially poems? I always think about the Book of Psalms as the Norton Anthology of Ancient Hebrew Lyrics. ... You look at Frost and he’s essentially writing his own Book of Psalms. There’s lamentations in Frost, there’s lamentations in the Bible. There’s the turning your eyes to nature. ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Father.’ You’ve got nature poetry in the Psalms. You’ve got love poetry. You’ve got everything. And you’ve got the same thing in Frost.”
In a world where people are seeking ways to “be whole beyond confusion,” perhaps the poems, or prayers, of Robert Frost are precisely what we need. For Parini, the poems he has committed to memory are thankfully not contingent upon a specific season, or even a specific decade. For him, they remain alive, renewed for each stage in life.
“I’m really stunned by how poems shift decade by decade in my own life. Poems that I thought I knew, I didn’t know. Lines I thought I knew when I was 20, now that I’m nearly 80, mean different things,” Parini said. “New meanings are becoming available to me as I begin to dig deeper into the lines and hear things underneath the lines that Frost may have intended.”
Frost’s poems possess that “intellectual, moral, and artistic strength” because the poet stored the best of the literary world in his own mind. He consumed the works of the great writers and philosophers, and those works consistently come through in his poetry.
“Frost had read everything. So reading Frost, I can hear buried in those lines, echoes of Keats, echoes of Wordsworth, echoes of John Milton, endless echoes of Shakespeare, echoes of the Bible, echoes of St. Paul. Frost had all of these great texts in his head. He’s inexhaustible, just like all the great writers are.”
“You don’t want to memorize bad poetry,” Parini said with a laugh. “If it doesn’t really mean anything. If it’s not brilliant, you don’t want to memorize it.”
If readers wonder where to begin memorizing brilliant poetry, Parini has set aside 16 poems to get readers started. When it comes to choosing a guide for life’s seasons, as Jay Parini attests, there’s hardly a better choice than Robert Frost.
