[New-Poetry] Re: Frost on the edge

[David Graham]

Amen.  I still think Jarrell's essays on Frost may be the best thing  
ever written on him, as his Whitman essay may be on old Walt.  I also  
agree with Bob Grumman that Frost's prose is marvelous.  I'm sorry he  
didn't write more of it.  Will have to get a look at the new edition  
of his journals.

Of course, the oppositional impulse, I guess by definition, doesn't  
go down without a fight, even after the battle has been won. . . .   
We're always fighting the last war, etc.

Not sure that a distinction between "outward" and "inward" space  
isn't just another too-simple dialectic, though I *think* I see the  
point.  Frost spoke of "the old-fashioned way to be new," as one of  
his own attempts to describe originality springing from tradition, as  
of course it always does, whether you're doing new things with  
iambics, or giving iambics the old heave-ho.


On Feb 4, 2007, at 9:39 PM, JforJames at aol.com wrote:

> Frost's poetry certainly speaks for itself. It has nothing to
> fear from time or boundless innovative poetries. He wrote some
> poems that will outlast hundreds of innovators. Randall Jarrell's  
> essay
> the "The Other Frost" says it all.
>
> The reason this discussion gets tiresome (or pointless), it
> because it's a simple, or simplistic, dialectic that is being set up.
> And innovators (or supposed innovators) always seem to forget
> that they don't innovate ex nihilo. Frost wrote more from the  
> tradition.
> Without the tradition there is no sense of talking about innovation.
>
> The 'innovators' always look to outward...and that space is boundless
> and their innovation can go on ad infinitum. Yet, if one looks inside,
> toward inner space, as though one was going inside the atom,
> the space is equally vast and boundless. Some poets choose
> the latter course.
>
> Finnegan
>

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