The Writer’s Almanac – MARCH 7 – 13, 2005

On this day in 1923, Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” was published in the New Republic magazine. It was Frost’s favorite of his own poems, and he called it, “My best bid for remembrance.” He’s remembered for many of his poems today, but that one is his best known and one of the most popular poems in American literature.

Though it’s a poem about winter, Frost wrote the first draft on a warm morning in the middle of June. The night before he had stayed up working at his kitchen table on a long, difficult poem called “New Hampshire” (1923). He finally finished it, and then looked up and saw that it was morning. He’d never worked all night on a poem before. Feeling relieved at the work he’d finished, he went outside and watched the sunrise.

While he was outside, he suddenly got an idea for a new poem. So he rushed back inside his house and wrote “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” in just a few minutes. He said he wrote most of the poem almost without lifting his pen off the page. He said, “It was as if I’d had a hallucination.”

He later said that he would have liked to print the poem on one page followed by “forty pages of footnotes.” He once said the first two lines of the poem, “Whose woods these are, I think I know, / his house is in the village though” contained everything he ever knew about how to write.

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.

With a link, johnny_mango brings me back to our new Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser.

A poet for the people

In early October, Kooser took over as the “Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.” It’s a flexible job. Kooser’s predecessor, Louise Glück, made it clear she wasn’t going to be as visible as her predecessor, Billy Collins, who had spent his two one-year terms (2001-03) as a roving ambassador for poetry.

Kooser, though, is taking Collins for his model. That means readings around the country, spreading poetry like gospel. And Kooser doesn’t fly — not because he’s afraid, he says, but because he feels intense discomfort on airplanes. He prefers to drive, which means he’ll log thousands of miles next year.

[mjh: the full article lurks behind a free subscription login. I used http://bugmenot.com to come up with a valid combination.]

Poet: Ted Kooser – All poems of Ted Kooser

Kooser’s poetry reminds me a bit of Billy Collins. His After Years is brilliant.

I’ve been listening to 52nd Street by Billy Joel. There are a couple of tunes I don’t like, but three that I still love almost a quarter century later: Stilleto, Rosalinda’s Eyes and Until The Night:

Today I do what must be done
I give my time to total strangers
But now it feels as though the the day goes on forever
More than it ever did before

Poems by Ted Kooser

After Years

Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer’s retina
as he stood on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.

—
America’s new poet laureate is Ted Kooser, a retired vice president of Lincoln Benefit Life insurance company in Nebraska [since August 12, 2004]….

Kooser, says former poet laureate Billy Collins, “is a poet who has deserved to be better known. This appointment will at least take care of that problem.” … Kooser, he adds, “is a thoroughly American poet laureate.” As for the poetry, Collins says it is clear and openhanded. …

He replaces Louise Gluck as poet laureate.

[many thanks to johnny_mango for this.]

The Writer’s Almanac – OCTOBER 18 – 24, 2004

Gathering Leaves
by Robert Frost

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.

I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.

But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.

I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight;
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.

Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who’s to say where
The harvest shall stop?

While this isn’t Frost’s best, it reminds me that Frost was the last American poet in my awareness to handle rhyme so well. mjh

From The Writer’s Almanac

It’s the birthday of poet, novelist and songwriter Leonard Cohen, born in Montreal, Canada (1934). He’s the author of many books of poetry, including Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956) and Death of a Ladies’ Man (1978), and novels such as Beautiful Losers (1966).

He learned to play guitar at a socialist summer camp when he was a teenager, but at the time he only used the guitar to get girls. He was more interested in poetry, and by the early 1960’s he was considered one of Canada’s most promising young poets. Then in 1966, the folksinger Judy Collins heard some of his songs, which he had written and performed only for friends, and she persuaded him to perform in public and make a record. He’s been recording music ever since.

His most famous song is “Suzanne” from Songs of Leonard Cohen (1968). It goes, “Now Suzanne takes your hand / And she leads you to the river / She is wearing rags and feathers / From Salvation Army counters / And the sun pours down like honey / On our lady of the harbour / And she shows you where to look / Among the garbage and the flowers.”

Leonard Cohen wrote, “As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder.”

So much can be said about Leonard Cohen. No one mixes lust and biblical mysticism better. Happy Birthday and thank you. mjh

Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen

The Heaven of Animals

Here they are. The soft eyes

open.
If they have lived in a wood
It is a wood.
If they have lived on plains
It is grass rolling
Under their feet forever.

Having no souls, they have come,
Anyway, beyond their knowing.
Their instincts wholly bloom
And they rise.
The soft eyes open.

To match them, the landscape flowers,
Outdoing, desperately
Outdoing what is required:
The richest wood,
The deepest field.

For

some of these,
It could not be the place
It is, without blood.
These hunt, as they have done
But with claws and teeth grown perfect,

More deadly than they can believe.
They stalk more silently,
And crouch on limbs of trees,
And their descent
Upon the bright

backs of their prey

May take years
In a sovereign floating of joy.
And those that are hunted
Know this as their life,
Their

reward: to walk

Under such trees in full knowledge
Of what is in glory above them,
And to feel no fear,
But acceptance,

compliance.
Fulfilling themselves without pain

At the cycle’s center,
They tremble, they walk
Under the tree,
They fall, they

are torn,
They rise, they walk again.

— James Dickey

My Droogie, Robert, sent me this poem for my birthday. Dickey

has long been a favorite of mine. mjh

my poem

for Dickey