"The Sound of Sense"

...Reading his fellow poets ("my rivals") made him uncomfortable...

...Lawrence) have been intellectually robust enough to be impressive critics as well as artists...

...The effect on Frost himself was questionable...

...Belief, Belief...

...higher education perhaps threatened his poetic gift...

...It is noteworthy that, as he approached death and began to brood on the afterlife, it was on the strength of his poems only that he expected to be judged by God...

...I'll bet I could tell of spiritual realizations that for the moment at least would overawe the contentious...

...Frost had the rare satisfaction of realizing a confessed fantasy: to make a name abroad, return a hero, teach and farm in a New England town, and hold forth to his country when so moved...

...But he also yielded to the temptation to do some pretty irresponsible spoofing...

...The poet's bias against mere knowledge and disputation must have made him an unusual authority in the college classroom, where he spent a good many hours, and certainly made him a wry observer of the educational scene: "At Amherst you thought, while at other colleges you merely learned...

...Although always at ease and flexibly aware of his audience, he is not always as clever as he thinks he is...

...Frost's objection to the benevolent paternalism of modem American government was in part a sincere reaction on behalf of self-responsibility...

...10.00 Reviewed by DAVID J. GORDON Department of English Hunter College The letters of Robert Frost, even more than the poems, are suffused with charm...

...Frost rarely got down that far, rarely risked that much...

...In America, nothing exceeds like success...

...Most people end as they begin by acting out the prejudices of other people...

...Virtually every poet who manages to achieve a style combines the two, in different proportions...

...In a letter to an aspiring poet, Frost wrote very penetratingly: "All that makes a writer is the ability to write strongly and directly from some unaccountable and almost invincible personal prejudice...

...Loyalty to that gift appears to have been (even though Frost was a devoted family man) the primary loyalty of his life...

...It is at first gratifying to read about his growing fame, but as the honors accumulate (there were 44 honorary degrees, not to mention other kinds of recognition), it becomes rather appalling...

...And when Frost admits, "Humor is the most engaging form of cowardice...

...They are playful, spirited and graceful, winningly candid or becomingly reticent: the expression of a man who loved the feel of words, a natural poet...

...Returning from Russia, he told reporters (falsely according to Lawrance Thompson, the excellent and thoroughly informed editor of these letters) that Khrushchev told him America was too liberal to fight, almost touching off thereby an international incident...

...to make a dozen or two permanent poems in a lifetime is a very considerable accomplishment...

...A central interest in these letters is the growth of Frost's reputation, from obscurity (until he was near 40) to superstardom...

...But his play can also be serious and even profound...

...Get up there high enough and the differences that make controversy become only the two legs of a body the weight of which is on one in one period, on the other in the next...

...Remember that Frost came to maturity in the 19th century, and consider (from the evidence of these letters) what a high price he paid for his own brilliant individuation—so high, it seems, that he clung for support to the false belief that "all conditioning is internal...

...Frost was keenly aware of the danger of being "too damned literary" at one end of the spectrum but not so aware of the danger of flatness at the other end, as many of his verses unfortunately show...

...Every poem is one...

...He thought of himself as a risker and did like to get involved in situations, but, since the voice of his poetry is the private voice, the satire against the timorous in "Neither Out Far Nor In Deep" tends to boomerang...

...Some poets (like T.S...

...He loved praise, and probably kept his head and sense of humor more than most would have done...

...Toward the end it is no longer Frost or his art that is being honored but some crude symbol of American greatness, like the Empire State Building...

...One can hardly acknowledge that Frost was a good poet without wondering why he wasn't a great one...

...He wrote a poet's prose, fresh and seductive in phrasing and rhythm but sometimes elusive and indefinite...

...But I should think there must be a whole realm or plane above that—all sight and insight, perception, intuition, rapture...

...He forgot that the capitalistindustrialist society which had created opportunities for some, like him, put others into increasingly helpless positions so that only through self-corrective measures could it make meaningful for all as fine an example of private and public triumph as Frost's own...

...We need not take Frost's antiliberalism too seriously since he only pretended to be a serious political thinker, but a word of explanation is in order...

...The idea is less original and less successfully defended than Frost believed...

...It involves what, from a human point of view, are some of his best qualities: his realism, judiciousness and good sense...

...Moreover, Frost's balance as a man and a poet was perilously achieved...

...Frost's creative energy was frailer...

...He never forgot, as did some of his academic correspondents, that intellectual creativity is a kind of play in which the victory of opinion matters less than the achievement of formal integration: "There are a lot of things to do in class beside debate and disagree...

...with it myself I have been able to hold some of my enemy in play far out of gunshot," we may feel that he has disarmed not only us but himself...

...Clash is all very well coming from lawyers, politicians and theologians...

...Frost's genuineness as a poet is linked to his weakness as a critic...

...You've got to augment by belief in life or people mightily or cross it uglily...

...The chief literary idea that Frost defends in these pages is what he called "the sound of sense," the crossing in verse of metrical rhythm by speech rhythm...

...And he never liked the novel, the dominant literary form of his day and ours, because of its rawer energy and cruder form...

...Eliot or D.H...

...This bias may explain why Frost, a good student, twice dropped out of college...

...This disparagement must not be overstressed...

...At times, it must be said, the charm is cute or coy...

...The answer will be the same, I think, if we ask why he was a good letter writer but not, like Keats or Lawrence, a great one...

...Having ideas that are neither pro nor con is the happy thing...

...I found that by thinking they meant stocking up with radical ideas, by learning they meant stocking up with conservative ideas—a harmless distinction, bless their simple hearts...

...Note that the fantasy enacted itself: As he published, Frost coached the reviewers, beguiled critics and publishers, cooperated with collectors and scholars, provided information for an appointed biographer, and graciously accepted numerous honors—not, of course, without wry commentary on the inconvenience of being a living monument...

...we can never know how much courage he summoned in keeping at bay the glaring streak of instability in his family, which led other members to insanity and suicide...

...I think that is why he suffered so much seemingly unreasonable guilt after each family misfortune...