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West-Running Brook
1st edition. Hardcover, 64 pages.
64 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1928
About the author
Robert Frost
815 books4,660 followersFlinty, moody, plainspoken and deep, Robert Frost was one of America's most popular 20th-century poets. Frost was farming in Derry, New Hampshire when, at the age of 38, he sold the farm, uprooted his family and moved to England, where he devoted himself to his poetry. His first two books of verse, A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914), were immediate successes. In 1915 he returned to the United States and continued to write while living in New Hampshire and then Vermont. His pastoral images of apple trees and stone fences -- along with his solitary, man-of-few-words poetic voice -- helped define the modern image of rural New England. Frost's poems include "Mending Wall" ("Good fences make good neighbors"), "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" ("Whose woods these are I think I know"), and perhaps his most famous work, "The Road Not Taken" ("Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- / I took the one less traveled by"). Frost was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry four times: in 1924, 1931, 1937 and 1943. He also served as "Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress" from 1958-59; that position was renamed as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry (or simply Poet Laureate) in 1986.
Frost recited his poem "The Gift Outright" at the 1961 inauguration of John F. Kennedy... Frost attended both Dartmouth College and Harvard, but did not graduate from either school... Frost preferred traditional rhyme and meter in poetry; his famous dismissal of free verse was, "I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down."
Frost recited his poem "The Gift Outright" at the 1961 inauguration of John F. Kennedy... Frost attended both Dartmouth College and Harvard, but did not graduate from either school... Frost preferred traditional rhyme and meter in poetry; his famous dismissal of free verse was, "I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down."
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
March 24, 2019
The great Overdog,
That heavenly beast
With a star in one eye,
Gives a leap in the east.
He dances upright
All the way to the west
And never once drops
On his forefeet to rest.
I'm a poor underdog,
But tonight I will bark
With the great Overdog
That romps through the dark.
3 ½?
Since New Hampshire (1923), a chronology:
1923-1925 – Professor of English, Amherst College (Frost's second time there)
1924 – Pulitzer Prize for New Hampshire
1925-1926 – Fellow in Letters, University of Michigan
1928-1938 – Back to Amherst
The title poem in this collection is just under three pages – and it's the longest of all of them!
42 poems over 25 pages.
I was not really enthusiastic about very many of these. I did plenty of underlining, lines or phrases that I liked, stuff like that. But … well, most poems got a few underlines and nothing else.
When I wrote things next to some poems, indicating that I quite enjoyed them, the two words I used most were "nice" and "interesting". Not indicating much excitement, right?
The poem quoted up top was one of these. I wrote "Love this one". It's called "Canis Major". And now, having just typed it in, I wonder, "Really… it's nice, and maybe that's about it?". Ah well.
Here's a couple more that (at the time anyway) I enjoyed.
THE DOOR IN THE DARK
In going from room to room in the dark
I reached out blindly to save my face,
But neglected, however lightly, to lace
My fingers and close my arms in an arc.
A slim door got in past my guard,
And hit me a blow in the head so hard
I had my native simile jarred.
So people and things don't pair anymore
With what they used to pair before.
TREE AT MY WINDOW
Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.
Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.
But, tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.
That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.
THE BIRTHPLACE
Here further up the mountain slope
Than there was ever any hope,
My father built, enclosed a spring,
Strung chains of wall round everything,
Subdued the growth of earth to grass,
And brought our various lives to pass.
A dozen girls and boys we were.
The mountain seemed to like the stir,
And made of us a little while –
With always something in her smile.
Today she wouldn't know our name.
(No girl's, of course, has stayed the same.)
The mountain pushed us off her knees.
And now her lap is full of trees.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: Mythology Edith Hamilton
Next review: All in a Day
Older review: Log of a Cowboy
Previous library review: New Hampshire
Next library review: A Further Range (not done yet)
That heavenly beast
With a star in one eye,
Gives a leap in the east.
He dances upright
All the way to the west
And never once drops
On his forefeet to rest.
I'm a poor underdog,
But tonight I will bark
With the great Overdog
That romps through the dark.
3 ½?
Since New Hampshire (1923), a chronology:
1923-1925 – Professor of English, Amherst College (Frost's second time there)
1924 – Pulitzer Prize for New Hampshire
1925-1926 – Fellow in Letters, University of Michigan
1928-1938 – Back to Amherst
The title poem in this collection is just under three pages – and it's the longest of all of them!
42 poems over 25 pages.
I was not really enthusiastic about very many of these. I did plenty of underlining, lines or phrases that I liked, stuff like that. But … well, most poems got a few underlines and nothing else.
When I wrote things next to some poems, indicating that I quite enjoyed them, the two words I used most were "nice" and "interesting". Not indicating much excitement, right?
The poem quoted up top was one of these. I wrote "Love this one". It's called "Canis Major". And now, having just typed it in, I wonder, "Really… it's nice, and maybe that's about it?". Ah well.
Here's a couple more that (at the time anyway) I enjoyed.
THE DOOR IN THE DARK
In going from room to room in the dark
I reached out blindly to save my face,
But neglected, however lightly, to lace
My fingers and close my arms in an arc.
A slim door got in past my guard,
And hit me a blow in the head so hard
I had my native simile jarred.
So people and things don't pair anymore
With what they used to pair before.
TREE AT MY WINDOW
Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.
Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.
But, tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.
That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.
THE BIRTHPLACE
Here further up the mountain slope
Than there was ever any hope,
My father built, enclosed a spring,
Strung chains of wall round everything,
Subdued the growth of earth to grass,
And brought our various lives to pass.
A dozen girls and boys we were.
The mountain seemed to like the stir,
And made of us a little while –
With always something in her smile.
Today she wouldn't know our name.
(No girl's, of course, has stayed the same.)
The mountain pushed us off her knees.
And now her lap is full of trees.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: Mythology Edith Hamilton
Next review: All in a Day
Older review: Log of a Cowboy
Previous library review: New Hampshire
Next library review: A Further Range (not done yet)
February 21, 2021
Robert Frost's short poem "West-Running Brook" is the titular poem of this collection. It is a little drama about some very big ideas. He began writing the poem in 1920 and decided to include it in a collection of poems he began compiling in the winter of 1927 and saw published the following year.
One notices that, of the couple in the poem, we have only a name for the man. His wife is either "my love" or "my dear".
Neither referents are all that bad, but they are indefinite, and when the couple are joined with the brook (two become three) it is the wife that goes unnamed even as she is the one who names the brook. It begins with a question, "Fred, where is north?", that folds into a discussion of the brook that runs west contrary to expectation and to "all the other country brooks" which flow east. He then announces one theme of the poem, contraries, as according to him "It must be the brook / Can trust itself to go by contraries" which he immediately compares to their relationship. This leads him to the conclusion that they are a "we", a couple who "must be something, but then adds the brook, saying:
"We'll both be married to the brook. We'll build
Our bridge across it, and the bridge shall be
Our arm thrown over it asleep beside it."
Thus the brook becomes the third to their two and is suddenly anthropomorphized with a wave that lets them know it hears". The lovely image of "our arm thrown over it" suggests a joining of the two together and with the brook as a third, perhaps a family. This also can be inferred from the wife's response below. The contraries of the poem are not violent, rather they are like some waves whose motions against the grain are like a resistance to going with the "drift of things". However when Fred suggests the river "wasn't waved to us" his wife disagrees:
"It wasn't, yet it was. If not to you / It was to me--in an annunciation."
Fred's response suggests that it is her fantasy and about such a brook "I have no more to say." But with her contrary encouragement the big ideas soon appear as Fred responds with a rhapsody on the primitive "water we were from" with Darwinian connotations leading us from "long before we were any creature." The metaphor of the stream of life also appears with hints of Lucretius including "a swerving" that suggests indeterminacy in the direction of the stream of life. In its flow we see,
"A universal cataract of death / That spends to nothingness". It is a throwing back (another sort of contrary) that demonstrates to us our source, the "nature we are from." His lengthy commentary on the source of life and the nature of its flow with currents "against the stream" seems an excess of eloquence. All this may be most unsettling to his wife, but her comment is a more simple recognition of where they are that concludes with "Today will be the day of what we both said."
I like the recognition that while she seems to say in effect we will agree to disagree, she is still referring to "we". They are a couple whose love, like that of Donne's poem, "The Ecstasy", and many others can withstand such disagreements. But we should note that this poem demonstrates many of Frost's preoccupations with its eloquent use of the stream metaphor and his ability to merge the dramatic with the lyrical form. The poem, at least if you side with Fred, seems to suggest that as humans we are ultimately redeemed by our natural resistance in the face of extinction. But, as is usually the case with Frost, the meaning is not explicit, the difference between husband and wife is not resolved. It is left on the table. Yet, the poem ends with them still a "we".
One notices that, of the couple in the poem, we have only a name for the man. His wife is either "my love" or "my dear".
Neither referents are all that bad, but they are indefinite, and when the couple are joined with the brook (two become three) it is the wife that goes unnamed even as she is the one who names the brook. It begins with a question, "Fred, where is north?", that folds into a discussion of the brook that runs west contrary to expectation and to "all the other country brooks" which flow east. He then announces one theme of the poem, contraries, as according to him "It must be the brook / Can trust itself to go by contraries" which he immediately compares to their relationship. This leads him to the conclusion that they are a "we", a couple who "must be something, but then adds the brook, saying:
"We'll both be married to the brook. We'll build
Our bridge across it, and the bridge shall be
Our arm thrown over it asleep beside it."
Thus the brook becomes the third to their two and is suddenly anthropomorphized with a wave that lets them know it hears". The lovely image of "our arm thrown over it" suggests a joining of the two together and with the brook as a third, perhaps a family. This also can be inferred from the wife's response below. The contraries of the poem are not violent, rather they are like some waves whose motions against the grain are like a resistance to going with the "drift of things". However when Fred suggests the river "wasn't waved to us" his wife disagrees:
"It wasn't, yet it was. If not to you / It was to me--in an annunciation."
Fred's response suggests that it is her fantasy and about such a brook "I have no more to say." But with her contrary encouragement the big ideas soon appear as Fred responds with a rhapsody on the primitive "water we were from" with Darwinian connotations leading us from "long before we were any creature." The metaphor of the stream of life also appears with hints of Lucretius including "a swerving" that suggests indeterminacy in the direction of the stream of life. In its flow we see,
"A universal cataract of death / That spends to nothingness". It is a throwing back (another sort of contrary) that demonstrates to us our source, the "nature we are from." His lengthy commentary on the source of life and the nature of its flow with currents "against the stream" seems an excess of eloquence. All this may be most unsettling to his wife, but her comment is a more simple recognition of where they are that concludes with "Today will be the day of what we both said."
I like the recognition that while she seems to say in effect we will agree to disagree, she is still referring to "we". They are a couple whose love, like that of Donne's poem, "The Ecstasy", and many others can withstand such disagreements. But we should note that this poem demonstrates many of Frost's preoccupations with its eloquent use of the stream metaphor and his ability to merge the dramatic with the lyrical form. The poem, at least if you side with Fred, seems to suggest that as humans we are ultimately redeemed by our natural resistance in the face of extinction. But, as is usually the case with Frost, the meaning is not explicit, the difference between husband and wife is not resolved. It is left on the table. Yet, the poem ends with them still a "we".
August 23, 2018
Shorter poems. Several evoke a stoic individualism.
December 20, 2022
Favourites:
•The Freedom of the Moon
•On Looking Up By Chance at the Constellations
•Riders
•The Investment
•Hannibal
•A Soldier
•Canis Major
•Sand Dunes
•The Peaceful Shepherd
•Tree at my Window
•A Minor Bird
•Once By The Pacific
•The Freedom of the Moon
•On Looking Up By Chance at the Constellations
•Riders
•The Investment
•Hannibal
•A Soldier
•Canis Major
•Sand Dunes
•The Peaceful Shepherd
•Tree at my Window
•A Minor Bird
•Once By The Pacific
May 1, 2014
This is Frost at his most consistant and best so far. He's growth as a poet is quite evident and makes for a great read.
November 18, 2021
This is one of the most anthologized poems of Frost, full of dreamy undertones. The poem tells us that human life is alive with contraries. The fundamental idea of the poem is to be found in the wife’s questioning about the brook:
What does it think it’s doing running west
When all the other country brooks flow east
To reach the ocean?
To the husband the brook is the representation of the ‘shadowy stream of human existence’ which leads to nonexistence:
It seriously, sadly runs away
Toill the abyss void with emptiness.
He further observes: “It flows between us, over us, and with us.”
Frost is not always grave, nor is he always light. And, his somber poems are not totally and constantly stern, nor are his light poems light.
He has a way of uniting contraries, expressing staid ideas in light, lighthearted tones or light ideas in an concentrated and teasting way. That is, the reader cannot settle on the profundity of the thought in his poems by the informal or unfathomable tones in which it is presented, but by the overall force the study of a poem has on us.
The anecdotal of the tones Frost employ as a routine mode to generate dramatic effects. Thus, even a lyric of Frost does not read like a lyric in an even tone of voice.
Thus, regardless of the idealistic undercurrents and the nature of the theme itself, “West-Running Brook” is a dramatic poem, and an important one at that.
And, good-humoredly, the center of the concentration is shifted to the dialogue of a profounder idea — the proposal that in realism contraries meet in one.
It must be the brook
Can trust itself to go by contraries
The way I can with ‘ou — and you will me
Because we’re — we’re — I don’t knew what we are.
What are we?
The brook, running counter to itself in the white waves, “the tribute of the current to the source,” becomes the background against which the poet studies our origin and existence.
It is from that in water we were from
Long, long before we were from any creature.
Here, we, in our impatience of the steps,
Get back to the beginning of beginnings,
The stream of everything that runs away.
Like the Brook engulfing whatever comes by it, continuation is an outlandish power that always keeps pounding on us.
It flows between us, over us, and with us.
And it is time, strength, tone, light, life and love —
Again like the brook which is opposites in one, our continuation is a ‘union of paradox’.
Our life runs down in sending up our life.
The sun runs down in sending up the brook.
And there is something sending up the sun.
It is this backward motion toward the source.
Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in,
The tribute of the current to the source….
Apart from the complexity of the rational idea it conveys, the poem is a presentation in words. The inflective tones of the speaker fluctuate the dramatic images of speech. There is a rolling movement, resembling that of the West-Running Brook in the lines.
The poem has the touch of a dramatic monologue. The lyric and the dramatic elements merge into it. The poem opens with a conversation between a husband and a wife.
In the third line there is an aside, which tells us that the poet is aware of his surroundings. The wave representation which is determinedly developed in the poem also reinforces the dramatic constituent.
The poem gets energy from this synthesis of the lyric and the dramatic.
The poem is cast by Robert Frost in an everyday tone. The poem begins with a query posed by the wife to her husband:
“Fred, where is north?
“North? North, is there, my love.
The brook runs west.”
“West-Running brook then call it.”
And the termination of the poem is uniformly conversational:
“Today will be the day
You said so.”
“No, today will be the day
You said the brook was called West-Running brook.”
“Today will be the day of what we both said.”
The poem begins with a query but ends with a wonderful agreement between the husband and the wife.
The manner in which both talk to each other is very recognizable and forthcoming.
The poem grows out of busted, stuttering, daily speech and ends with a complex rhythmic structure of purposeful idiom.
What does it think it’s doing running west
When all the other country brooks flow east
To reach the ocean?
To the husband the brook is the representation of the ‘shadowy stream of human existence’ which leads to nonexistence:
It seriously, sadly runs away
Toill the abyss void with emptiness.
He further observes: “It flows between us, over us, and with us.”
Frost is not always grave, nor is he always light. And, his somber poems are not totally and constantly stern, nor are his light poems light.
He has a way of uniting contraries, expressing staid ideas in light, lighthearted tones or light ideas in an concentrated and teasting way. That is, the reader cannot settle on the profundity of the thought in his poems by the informal or unfathomable tones in which it is presented, but by the overall force the study of a poem has on us.
The anecdotal of the tones Frost employ as a routine mode to generate dramatic effects. Thus, even a lyric of Frost does not read like a lyric in an even tone of voice.
Thus, regardless of the idealistic undercurrents and the nature of the theme itself, “West-Running Brook” is a dramatic poem, and an important one at that.
And, good-humoredly, the center of the concentration is shifted to the dialogue of a profounder idea — the proposal that in realism contraries meet in one.
It must be the brook
Can trust itself to go by contraries
The way I can with ‘ou — and you will me
Because we’re — we’re — I don’t knew what we are.
What are we?
The brook, running counter to itself in the white waves, “the tribute of the current to the source,” becomes the background against which the poet studies our origin and existence.
It is from that in water we were from
Long, long before we were from any creature.
Here, we, in our impatience of the steps,
Get back to the beginning of beginnings,
The stream of everything that runs away.
Like the Brook engulfing whatever comes by it, continuation is an outlandish power that always keeps pounding on us.
It flows between us, over us, and with us.
And it is time, strength, tone, light, life and love —
Again like the brook which is opposites in one, our continuation is a ‘union of paradox’.
Our life runs down in sending up our life.
The sun runs down in sending up the brook.
And there is something sending up the sun.
It is this backward motion toward the source.
Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in,
The tribute of the current to the source….
Apart from the complexity of the rational idea it conveys, the poem is a presentation in words. The inflective tones of the speaker fluctuate the dramatic images of speech. There is a rolling movement, resembling that of the West-Running Brook in the lines.
The poem has the touch of a dramatic monologue. The lyric and the dramatic elements merge into it. The poem opens with a conversation between a husband and a wife.
In the third line there is an aside, which tells us that the poet is aware of his surroundings. The wave representation which is determinedly developed in the poem also reinforces the dramatic constituent.
The poem gets energy from this synthesis of the lyric and the dramatic.
The poem is cast by Robert Frost in an everyday tone. The poem begins with a query posed by the wife to her husband:
“Fred, where is north?
“North? North, is there, my love.
The brook runs west.”
“West-Running brook then call it.”
And the termination of the poem is uniformly conversational:
“Today will be the day
You said so.”
“No, today will be the day
You said the brook was called West-Running brook.”
“Today will be the day of what we both said.”
The poem begins with a query but ends with a wonderful agreement between the husband and the wife.
The manner in which both talk to each other is very recognizable and forthcoming.
The poem grows out of busted, stuttering, daily speech and ends with a complex rhythmic structure of purposeful idiom.
February 11, 2022
For me, perhaps surprisingly, Robert Frost takes some getting used to. I happened to read North of Boston because it was so highly recommended by a prolific Goodreads reviewer who I follow, and I found it not easy to get into the swing of his writing.
This collection isn't so much narrative and dialogue, and it was more satisfying to me; but one of the biggest blocks for me is my prejudice against strict rhyming in poetry:
I guess I was so wild about Wordsworth, Shakespeare, contemporary poets, that rhyming seems elementary. And yet, Robert Frost is no slouch, and I've had to read a fair amount of his poetry to start appreciating its particular rhythm in combination with his poetic sensibility. Two poems in this collection stood out for me, "The Thatch" and "Acquainted With the Night":
This collection isn't so much narrative and dialogue, and it was more satisfying to me; but one of the biggest blocks for me is my prejudice against strict rhyming in poetry:
These pools htat, though in forests, still reflectOK, it's actually not strict rhyming; the first two lines rhyme, then it's an ABAB rhyme scheme. And I'm no poet, or scholar of poetry, so there's undoubtedly an official term for such poetic form.
The total sky almost without defect,
and like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
and yet not out by any brook or river,
but up by roots to bring dark foliage on. (from "Spring Pools")
I guess I was so wild about Wordsworth, Shakespeare, contemporary poets, that rhyming seems elementary. And yet, Robert Frost is no slouch, and I've had to read a fair amount of his poetry to start appreciating its particular rhythm in combination with his poetic sensibility. Two poems in this collection stood out for me, "The Thatch" and "Acquainted With the Night":
The Thatch
Out alone in the winter rain,
Intent on giving and taking pain.
But never was I far out of sight
Of a certain upper-window light.
The light was what it was all about:
I would no go in till the light went out;
It would not go out till I came in.
Well, we should see which one would win.
We should see which one would be first to yield.
The world was a black invisible field.
The rain by rights was snow for cold.
The wind was another layer of mould.
But the strangest thing: in the thick old thatch,
Where summer birds had been given hatch,
Had fed in chorus, and lived to fledge,
Some still were living in hermitage.
And as I passed along the eaves,
So low I brushed the straw with my sleeves,
I flushed birds out of hole after hole,
Into the darkness. It grieved my soul,
It started with a grief within a grief,
To think their case was beyond relief –
They could no go flying about in search
Of their nest again, nor find a perch.
They must brood where they fell in mulch and mire,
Trusting feathers and inward fire
Till daylight made it safe for a flyer.
My greater grief was by so much reduced
As I thought of them without nest or roost.
That was how that grief started to melt.
They tell me the cottage where we dwelt,
Its wind-torn thatch goes now unmended;
Its life of hundreds of years has ended
By letting the rain I knew outdoors
In on to the upper chamber floors.
As of 1914
AQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain – and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
April 1, 2022
West-Running Brook was a volume of poetry Robert Frost had published in 1928. The collection includes poetry on many different aspects of human life with an emphasis on nature and solitude. Unlike his previous volumes this collection has no, what one might consider, narrative poetry (such as was emphasized in his first two volumes A Boy's Will and North of Boston), and no popular "top twenty hits" such as Mending Wall and Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening. In addition, in many cases, these poems, at least for me, are much more cryptic and hard to understand, but when they are understood, they are like a revelation.
I will just share one, as an example called Devotion:
The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean--
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.
My interpretation: How often have we had to do tasks (such as caring for someone) and found it repetitive, as the tide coming onto the shore, over and over again? Is that not devotion?
In any case, these poems are beautiful, but they take effort and quiet reflection. Meditating upon them will not be time wasted.
I will just share one, as an example called Devotion:
The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean--
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.
My interpretation: How often have we had to do tasks (such as caring for someone) and found it repetitive, as the tide coming onto the shore, over and over again? Is that not devotion?
In any case, these poems are beautiful, but they take effort and quiet reflection. Meditating upon them will not be time wasted.
September 26, 2018
I am in love with the way Frost paints with words. You can smell deep woods just by reading one of these in a crowded subway.
'The Bear' being next to last in this collection is probably swaying me to those 5 clean stars, but...
Others I found remarkable: Acquainted with the Night, Lodged, A Peck of Gold.
'The Bear' being next to last in this collection is probably swaying me to those 5 clean stars, but...
Others I found remarkable: Acquainted with the Night, Lodged, A Peck of Gold.
June 25, 2021
Possibly an idiosyncratic set of poems. A number of short, pithy lyrics, with a few especially breathtaking twists when meaning is made clear. The final 5-10 poems, explicitly or implicitly, are a curious set ruminating in the interaction between faith, science, and technology. They seem especially apt today. Many nature metaphors and country people. Will definitely re-read.
June 7, 2022
Frost, much like the brook in the title, feints slightly in a different direction here--gone are long narrative poems in favor of shorter bursts, some bordering on the aphoristic. A number of the poems of more modest length are quite exceptional, and the overall tone of the collection is one of a man playing with ideas, throwing up thoughts like a fire, sparks.
December 21, 2023
Frost is always enjoyable. This work was almost entirely new to me (all except for the delightful "Aquatinted with the Night"). Loved the comparisons in "Fireflies in the Garden" and found the emotions relatable in "Lodged," "A Minor Bird," and "The Last Mowing." "Bereft" also had some good phrasing to express grief and loneliness.
November 13, 2022
Highlights ~ "Spring Pools" "The Freedom of the Moon" "The Rise Family" "Fireflies in the Garden" "The Cocoon" "The Flood" "Acquainted With the Night" "West Running Brook" "A Soldier" "The Last Mowing" "On Looking Up by Chance at the Constellations" and "The Bear".
July 14, 2023
One of the better Robert Frost collections I've read. I still find the straight up and down rhyme scheme a little off-putting. What makes the volume is the space given to each poem and the illustrations.
July 31, 2022
A collection of poems intertwining observations about nature with those about the human condition. Some gorgeous woodcuts illustrate the collection.
It rates 3.5 stars.
It rates 3.5 stars.
March 27, 2021
As with A Witness Tree, which I just read, quality-wise this is a bit of a jumble.
I liked these poems (in order of appearance):
Spring Pools
The Freedom of the Moon
Tree at My Window
Acquainted with the Night
West-Running Brook
Sand Dunes
A Soldier
The Door in the Dark
On Looking Up by Chance at the Constellations
And these slightly less but well enough:
The Rose Family
Fireflies in the Garden
Devotion
Acceptance
Bereft
Canis Major
Hannibal
The poems at the front are great, especially the first two and Tree at My Window. The title poem stands out as well. And the metaphor extended in A Soldier is dazzling.
The others tend to get rustic, quaint, corny, and full of half-baked contrivances to arrive at banal rhymes. I might have given an extra star if I hadn't felt so put off by the final section (part VI).
The woodcuts are pleasant, but with a grand total of four, it's just atmosphere. I read the Kindle... if I had a paper copy, I might want to keep it, as I don't care for dynamically reformatted verses. This and A Witness Tree have something in common besides an author: they've seen little in the way of reprints. Both have a few really good poems I'd like to keep around.
First stanza from Sand Dunes, which develops the idea nicely afterwards:
Sea waves are green and wet,
But up from where they die,
Rise others vaster yet,
And those are brown and dry.
I love that! The second comma shouldn't be there, I thought, but the rhythm would feel off with an enjambment, especially given his style and the poem overall. With the comma, for me, this calls to mind waves cresting on waves, breakers, etc. It's subtle but I think it's a real effect.
The last stanza gives an example of the phrasiness I mentioned, but it stays just this side of acceptably poetic for me:
Men left her a ship to sink:
They can leave her a hut as well;
And be but more free to think
For the one more cast off shell.
If the rather dodgy end of this poem weren't surrounded by dodgier examples that fall off to their doom, I probably wouldn't mention it at all or question it much.
Here's one in full. After several readings, it seems less ambling and frivolous than at first. But I still find it contrived (and didn't list it above, though it has some good features).
SITTING BY A BUSH IN BROAD SUNLIGHT
When I spread out my hand here today,
I catch no more than a ray
To feel of between thumb and fingers;
No lasting effect of it lingers.
There was one time and only the one
When dust really took in the sun;
And from that one intake of fire
All creatures still warmly suspire.
And if men have watched a long time
And never seen sun-smitten slime
Again come to life and crawl off,
We must not be too ready to scoff.
God once declared he was true
And then took the veil and withdrew,
And remember how final a hush
Then descended of old on the bush.
God once spoke to people by name.
The sun once imparted its flame.
One impulse persists as our breath;
The other persists as our faith.
The first in the book is probably my favorite, but several are about this good:
SPRING POOLS
These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods—
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.
I liked these poems (in order of appearance):
Spring Pools
The Freedom of the Moon
Tree at My Window
Acquainted with the Night
West-Running Brook
Sand Dunes
A Soldier
The Door in the Dark
On Looking Up by Chance at the Constellations
And these slightly less but well enough:
The Rose Family
Fireflies in the Garden
Devotion
Acceptance
Bereft
Canis Major
Hannibal
The poems at the front are great, especially the first two and Tree at My Window. The title poem stands out as well. And the metaphor extended in A Soldier is dazzling.
The others tend to get rustic, quaint, corny, and full of half-baked contrivances to arrive at banal rhymes. I might have given an extra star if I hadn't felt so put off by the final section (part VI).
The woodcuts are pleasant, but with a grand total of four, it's just atmosphere. I read the Kindle... if I had a paper copy, I might want to keep it, as I don't care for dynamically reformatted verses. This and A Witness Tree have something in common besides an author: they've seen little in the way of reprints. Both have a few really good poems I'd like to keep around.
First stanza from Sand Dunes, which develops the idea nicely afterwards:
Sea waves are green and wet,
But up from where they die,
Rise others vaster yet,
And those are brown and dry.
I love that! The second comma shouldn't be there, I thought, but the rhythm would feel off with an enjambment, especially given his style and the poem overall. With the comma, for me, this calls to mind waves cresting on waves, breakers, etc. It's subtle but I think it's a real effect.
The last stanza gives an example of the phrasiness I mentioned, but it stays just this side of acceptably poetic for me:
Men left her a ship to sink:
They can leave her a hut as well;
And be but more free to think
For the one more cast off shell.
If the rather dodgy end of this poem weren't surrounded by dodgier examples that fall off to their doom, I probably wouldn't mention it at all or question it much.
Here's one in full. After several readings, it seems less ambling and frivolous than at first. But I still find it contrived (and didn't list it above, though it has some good features).
SITTING BY A BUSH IN BROAD SUNLIGHT
When I spread out my hand here today,
I catch no more than a ray
To feel of between thumb and fingers;
No lasting effect of it lingers.
There was one time and only the one
When dust really took in the sun;
And from that one intake of fire
All creatures still warmly suspire.
And if men have watched a long time
And never seen sun-smitten slime
Again come to life and crawl off,
We must not be too ready to scoff.
God once declared he was true
And then took the veil and withdrew,
And remember how final a hush
Then descended of old on the bush.
God once spoke to people by name.
The sun once imparted its flame.
One impulse persists as our breath;
The other persists as our faith.
The first in the book is probably my favorite, but several are about this good:
SPRING POOLS
These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods—
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.
April 6, 2012
By far the most frequently quoted of Frost's poetic pronouncements is his aphorism that writing free verse is like "playing tennis without a net." Mostly, it's used as a stick by cobweb-laden critics intent on beating up experimental verse they haven't bothered to read. It's much less common to see the phrase applied to Frost's own poetry. I'm bringing this up now because a strong majority of the poems in Frost's fifth volume give evidence of the down-side of his formalist tendencies. Where North of Boston, New Hampshire and Mountain Interval alternate between short pithy poems and longer narrative poems (most of them written in blank verse), West-Running Brook consists almost entirely of very short poems in very tight rhyming forms. Far too often, this highlights the avuncular, aphoristic side of Frost's persona, the "folksy philosopher" crammed down the throats of generation sof high school students. There are a few glimpses of the darker ironic Frost, especially in the sequence that begins with "Once By the Pacific" and ends with the brilliant "Acquainted With the Night." "Lodged," "Bereft," "Tree at My Window," and the narrative poem "The Thatch" would be at home in any of his books. But most of the lyrics and even the longer title poem fall flat. Not anywhere close to Frost's best.
December 1, 2012
A collection of early works, Frost's poems are inspired by nature and his moodiness. A quick, enjoyable read, the only one I really felt fell short was actually the title poem [and the longest of the bunch]. In this collection, its format is jarring but it might shine in another collection. Everything else was a peaceful delight to read.
Read
January 22, 2022Stories are used to escape reality, but I think there is a true gift in being able to present to the world a volume of work in which readers may find solace, in which they may see their own emotions beautifully illustrated into flowing verse that, while perhaps not romanticizing, allows one to fully appreciate the nuances of humanity.
July 9, 2010
I was not impressed with West Running Brook. Maybe because my spectrum of poetic appreciation is not developed well enough, or maybe because it was boring and none of it rhymed.
January 18, 2015
<3 Frost!
April 11, 2017
One good poem in the whole collection, maybe two. It felt like a bundle of things Frost had left over after writing New Hampshire.
September 6, 2014
simple, lovely and clear.
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