COURSE :Introduction To Literature

DEPARTMENT : ENGLISH

PROFESSOR : WATERS

Lecture4 : Poetry1

View the Power Point Presentation of the Lecture

It took a long time for the great American poet Robert Frost to gain recognition but fortunately Frost lived nearly 90 years. In the late 1940s and 1950s Frost became a much celebrated reader of his poetry who drew huge crowds wanting to hear the classic works that he reads here including the “Oven Bird,” “The Road Not Taken,” “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” and “The Silken Tent.” Frost was the first poet to read aloud at a presidential inauguration. He read for President John F. Kennedy and he was recorded many times. At the Library of Congress alone there are more than 30 recordings of Frost. Frost uses a plain spoken straightforward delivery that like his work seems very American. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both, And be one traveler, long I stood, And looked down one as far as I could, To where it bent in the undergrowth. Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim. Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there. Had worn them really about the same.And both that morning equally lay. In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh. Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here. To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer, To stop without a farmhouse near. Between the woods and frozen lake. The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake, To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep, Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. Only two poets in this collection pursued careers completely outside the arts while at the height of their writing powers. Wellace Stephens was a lawyer and William Carlos Williams was a physician. Williams was also a world traveler and was acquainted with many of the other great poets of him time but Williams ultimately rejected the work of many of his expatriate peers including Ezra Pound. Williams wanted to write a distinctly American poetry that placed every day objects in his focus. Thus his favorite quote no ideas but in things. Williams devised his method of writing free verse in which lines do not necessarily have the same length or number of beats but do have the same importance or weight. In 1947 Williams recorded a number at the Library of Congress including “Queen-Anne’s –Lace,” “To Elsie,” and “The Red Wheelbarrow.” Queen-Anne’s Lace. Her body is not so white as anemone petals nor so smooth - nor so remote a thing. It is a field of the wild carrot taking the field by force; the grass does not raise above it. Here is no question of whiteness, white as can be, with a purple mole at the center of each flower. Each flower is a hand's span of her whiteness. Wherever his hand has lain there is a tiny purple blemish. Each part is a blossom under his touch to which the fibres of her being stem one by one, each to its end, until the whole field is a white desire, empty, a single stem, a cluster, flower by flower, a pious wish to whiteness gone over--or nothing. The Red Wheelbarrow. So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.