Modern American Poetry

311

I’m not here to make exorbitant claims for poetry, lest they seem

personal, but one thing must be said about poetry—it’s the ultimate. The

nearest thing to it is penultimate, even religion. Poetry is the thoughts

of the heart.... It’s a thought-felt thing. Poetry is the thing that laughs

and cries about everything as it’s going on—and makes you take it.

—Robert Frost, in Thompson, Robert Frost:

The Later Years 238

A poet is a person who thinks there is something special about a poet and

about his loving one unattainable woman. You’ll usually find he takes the

physical out on whores. I am defining a romantic poet—and there is no

other kind. An unromantic poet is a self-contradiction like the

democratic aristocrat that reads the Atlantic Monthly. Ink, mink, pepper,

stink, I, am, out! I am not a poet. What am I then? Not a farmer—never

was—never said I was.

—Robert Frost, in Thompson, Robert Frost:

The Years of Triumph 381

In Frost’s poetry the birds never seem to fly very high, and when they do take
flight they risk being overtaken by darkness. For them, the trees become
both havens and traps, to be flown to for cover at twilight and, more

KATHERINE KEARNS

Lyricism:

At the Back of the North Wind

FromRobert Frost and a Poetics of Appetite. © 1994 Cambridge University Press.