A History of American Literature

350 Making It New: 1900–1945

own continued will to survive, Robinson argues, and to perpetuate the race, suggests

that we have some intuitive conviction implanted in us, something that tells us that

life is worth living. We persist; and that, together with any further glimpses of the

truth we may receive by means of dreams, hints, and guesses, is the best possible

evidence we can have of the existence of purpose. “Where was he going, this man

against the sky,” the poet asks, and then answers:

You know not, nor do I.

But this we know, if we know anything:

That we may laugh and fight and sing

And of our transience here make offering

To an orient Word that will not be erased,

Or, save in incommunicable gleams,

Too permanent for dreams,

Be found or known.

The argument is characteristically tentative, but clear. Perhaps the simple human

will to live, and to look for meaning, provides a basis for belief. Despite their isolation,

and the acute limitations imposed on them, people continue to search for value;

they remain dreamers. And perhaps their dreams, together with the instinct to con-

tinue, bring them closer to the truth than they can ever know. The world may well

be “a spiritual kindergarten,” Robinson concedes, but it can offer occasional lessons,

moments of illumination however dim and inadequate. We, its members, may not

be able to spell the “orient Word” with the few words available to us, but the failure

to spell it does not disprove its existence – it may still be lurking there, somewhere.

Like Robinson, Robert Frost was drawn toward traditional forms. “I had as soon

write free verse,” he once declared, “as play tennis without a net.” For him, traditional

meters were a necessary discipline, something against which he could play off the

urgencies of his own speaking voice, the chance movements of his emotions, the

catch and tilt of his breath. Like Robinson, too, Frost acquired fame but never shed

what he referred to as his “daily gloominess.” His first volume of poetry, A Boy’s Will

(1912), was published in England, where he lived for a while and became acquainted

both with Ezra Pound, who helped Frost to get his work in Poetry, and with the

“Georgian” group of poets that included Edward Thomas. North of Boston (1914),

his second collection, became a bestseller; Mountain Interval (1916), the third

collection, attracted national attention; and his Collected Poems (1930) won national

prizes. By 1955 he had so many honorary degrees that he could have had his doctoral

hoods sewn together to make a quilt for his bed. And by the 1960s he was sufficiently

famous to be invited to read a poem at the inauguration of President Kennedy and

to represent the United States on a goodwill mission to Russia. Yet Frost, through all

this, was haunted by personal misfortune. Two children died in infancy, a son

committed suicide, and one of his daughters was committed to a mental institution.

And not just at moments of crisis such as these, Frost sprinkled his journals with

remarks such as: “One of the hardest disciplines is having to learn the meaningless,”

or, more simply, “Nature is chaos.”

GGray_c04.indd 350ray_c 04 .indd 350 8 8/1/2011 7:53:49 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 53 : 49 AM