RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,043
(invitation to an inauguration)
My sorrow is not that grand,
nor is my happiness any grander.
They are each compromises made
out of themselves. Mediocre and
replicates. In fact, I very much
might be all false.The poet Robert
Frost, it was said, was 'two picture
puzzles perversely dumped into
one box and, no matter how much
you try, the leg will never go rightly
with the arm, nor his brown eye
with that green one. Perhaps the
worse you could say about Frost
was that he could not really like
his peers.' I liked that. It seemed
a neat way of summing up the
indeterminate nature, I guess, of
but one version of myself. I'd won
the 'Oratorical Contest' back in the
seminary, with a piece, chosen
all by myself, of Frost's, called
'The Fear.' I'd come at it blindly,
and, at fourteen, with little of my
own knowledge of either him or
the piece itself, setting or activity
or place it presented - its sort
of foreboding and perversely
overwrought 'human' touch.
I still can't say what it was
all about, but it was, at the time,
like nothing I'd seen before, a
real odd setting and story-line.
It fell within my time-limit for
the contest, so with it I went.
As a 10 year old, or maybe 11,
whenever it was that Kennedy
was inaugurated; a January.
I remember watching the guest
speaker or whatever role he had,
whom I always confused, one or the
other, between Robert Frost and
Carl Sandburg. I think it was
Frost. I know it was cold (ha),
snow and wind was around, he
looked pitifully cold, and the
wind or something blew away
his prepared remarks, so he
recited, from memory, that poem
about 'we were the land's before
the land was ours.' However it
goes; I've probably got that wrong
too. I never much cared for detail,
and specially in retrospect.
So, whether it was Frost or
Sandburg, its essence of moment
stayed with me. Maybe that's why
I selected it to read, along with
some other piece by Martin Luther.
I didn't feel that Robert Frost
possessed any of that high and
mighty, elevated 'poetic' stance of
cafes and berets and existentialism
and all that - heck he didn't even
seem to fit in the normal canon of
old 'Poets.' None of that twisting
angst - his work was more of the
sort you'd expect to find on some
old farm calendar, and his personality
seemed like that as well - a sort of
flinty, scratchy New England, one
comprised of a mating between say,
Vermont and Maine. What did I
know? The stupid poem worked,
but I never knew why. Nor even
what it was. He was his own
stereotype, as it was said.
-
Fame hit him, for whatever reason,
in 1951, with his first book, 'North
of Boston.' He was 41. (Oddly
enough, for being invited, he was
the same age as Kennedy at election).
I guess he stayed private. I guess
he stayed defiant. But at the moment
of the inauguration, he was nothing
if not 'representative.' Of what, I
didn't rightly now. In no area of
American life, in my viewpoint
of it, had I seen anyone or thing
like him. He was certainly not a
Bohemian. He did seem to have
a clear connection to old New
Englanders, the kind who were
always on about something,
publically trying to instruct the
populace on some matter. And,
at the same time, he was stirred
and a little annoyed by the great
public audiences that other American
poets - not him - had. A rivalry,
even if personal, and at which he
failed; even if imagined.
-
'A popular poet is always a
spectacle of some interest, for
poetry in general is not popular,
and when the popular poet is
also within limits a distinguished
poet, the spectacle is even more
curious. When we encounter such
a spectacle, we may be reasonably
sure of finding certain social and
historical reasons for the popularity.'
(Yvor Winters). [I hate sentences
like that, all heavy and proclamatory.
I don't even fully know what it means.
But I place it here nonetheless
as a kind of regal satire].
-
Many poets have had quotes about
poetry; in fact that little sport is
quite legion. There are many of
them. Robert Frost had two, neither
of which were particularly striking
in the light of what many others
had said more tellingly. his were:
"Poetry is when an emotion has
found its thought and the thought
has found words." And the second
was "Poetry is what gets lost in
translation." Those are each fairly
encased in the format of poetic
logic and viewpoint, though
neither hold any real magic.
-
So many years have passed, Mr.
Frost, that my entire life is now
lost in translation. I can only sit
here and think back, mostly; not
even forward. I commune with
trees, and the next thing I know
they're cut down and dragged
away. ('Poetry is that space
between seeing and appreciation;
where most things are lost or
taken from us').
That's mine.
That's mine.
-
One time I was walking uptown;
I think it was to the corner of 57th
or 59th, and Fifth Ave. There used to
be a building there, like the Fuller
Building too, that contained (1960's)
floors of small art galleries; so small
enough to be confining. But they
got the silent and exalted idea of the
'Art' across well. Reverentially almost.
You see, back then, whatever else it
was, exhibited 'Art' wasn't as much
confrontational or colloquial as it is
now. Actually, that goes for poetry
too - in that I could never foresee
Robert Frost, say, writing a poem
about the 'naked girl with a pistol
in her mouth who is dreaming of
Istanbul while being violated by
a unicorn.' Alas, that's fairly
characteristic now of the sorts
of work we get, and in Art too.
Just look around you. Anyhow,
none of that would have flown
here, in that building and in those
galleries. - even as it was 'modern'
art, it still held the professed and high
tone of intellectual inquisitiveness
about matter and time and space.
There was just something about it
that drove a creative person TO it.
in my case, for sure. Robert Frost,
I daresay, didn't have that draw for
me. He was almost trite and tired
and boring. My mind, opposite to
that, wanted to air out, thrash things
around, and unsettle the world. I
don't think that was anything, then,
that would have brought one an
invitation to an inauguration.
Whoever you may have been.
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