"Out, Out-"

To start, let's read the poem. But don't let's read it silently--it should be read aloud for the full experience (I wrote that, primarily, so I could use the phrase 'don't let's').

Out, Out-
Robert Frost

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap--
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all--
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart--
He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off--
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then--the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little--less--nothing!--and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

Admittedly, I don't much care for poetry. I probably don't much care for it because I find it difficult--both to read and to write. Despite my general apathy toward poetry, I have always loved most poems by Robert Frost. I feel tragically cliché for so liking Frost, but I can't lie.

I hadn't encountered this poem until it was read to me by my lit. theory professor this summer semester. He, being fairly open with his emotions, nearly wept while reading this short, sparkling example of blank verse and I was certainly affected as well. We used this poem in a deconstructive exercise and the poem is very open to various theoretical interpretations but I have trouble getting into theory because the story of the poem is so tragic. Life lost, youth wasted, familial exploitation, death. I don't know what more to say so I'll just mention another Frost poem I love: "Home Burial."

Linton Kwesi Johnson

As an assigned listening (that's not common for non-music majors) for my 20th Century Post-Colonial Lit. course, I was exposed to the music/poetry of Linton Kwesi Johnson. LKJ is one of the best known British dub poets and released his first album, Dread Beat An' Blood, in 1978 and hasn't stopped writing and recording since. Born in Jamaica, LKJ immigrated to London early in his life and identifies as a British citizen.

Dub poetry is essentially poetic verses set to reggae music. Though I haven't heard more than a handful of dub poets, the music is completely wrapped up in the lyrics and the lyrics are semi-sung (think Rex Harrison, only deeper and with force).

My favorite LKJ poem is called "Sonny's Lettah (Anti-Sus Poem)". Every dub poem I have heard is politically charged, and for good reason. Sus, denounced in "Sonny's Lettah," is the practice of British police officers arresting people on the street for looking suspicious. It, not surprisingly, happened primarily to black, accented men. His political leanings are sharply anti-Thatcher and occasionally violent. He was an early member of British Black Panther Movement. He's recorded many anti-fascist songs and has compared the modern anti-terrorism movement to the strife of blacks for centuries.

Beyond the political message of dub poetry, the music is wonderful. The lyrics fold directly into the music and the thumping bass drives the song. I know these descriptions aren't too technical or descriptive, but it's what I like.

Daffodils by Ted Hughes

Daffodils

Remember how we picked the daffodils?
Nobody else remembers, but I remember.
Your daughter came with her armfuls, eager and happy,
Helping the harvest. She has forgotten.
She cannot even remember you. And we sold them
It sounds like sacrilege, but we sold them.
Were we so poor? Old Stoneman, the grocer,
Boss-eyed, his blood-pressure purpling to beetroot
(It was his last chance,
He would die in the same great freeze as you),
He persuaded us. Every Spring
He always bought them, sevenpence a dozen,
'A custom of the house'.

Besides, we still weren't sure we wanted to own
Anything. Mainly we were hungry
To convert everything to profit.
Still nomads--still strangers
To our whole possession. The daffodils
Were incidental gilding of the deeds,
Treasure trove. They simply came,
And they kept on coming.
As if not from the sod but falling from heaven.
Our lives were still a raid on our own good luck.
We knew we'd live for ever. We had not learned
What a fleeting glance of the everlasting
Daffodils are. Never identified
The nuptial flight of the rarest ephemera -
Our own days!

We thought they were a windfall.
Never guessed they were a last blessing.
So we sold them. We worked at selling them
As if employed on somebody else's
Flower-farm. You bent at it
In the rain of that April - your last April,
We bent there together, among the soft shrieks
Of their jostled stems, the wet shocks shaken
Of their girlish dance-frocks -
Fresh-opened dragonflies, wet and flimsy,
Opened too early.

We piled their frailty lights on a carpenter's bench,
Distributed leaves among the dozens -
Buckling blade-leaves, limber, groping for air, zinc-silvered -
Propped their raw butts in bucket water,
Their oval, meaty butts,
And sold them, sevenpence a bunch -

Wind-wounds, spasms from the dark earth,
With their odourless metals,
A flamy purification of the deep grave's stony cold
As if ice had a breath -

We sold them, to wither.
The crop thickened faster than we could thin it.
Finally, we were overwhelmed
And we lost our wedding-present scissors.

Every March since they have lifted again
Out of the same bulbs, the same
Baby-cries from the thaw,
Ballerinas too early for music, shiverers
In the draughty wings of the year.
On that same groundswell of memory, fluttering
They return to forget you stooping there
Behind the rainy curtains of a dark April,
Snipping their stems.

But somewhere your scissors remember. Wherever they are.
Here somewhere, blades wide open,
April by April
Sinking deeper
Through the sod - an anchor, a cross of rust.

-Ted Hughes

(I typed this poem because the internet versions I discovered didn't have the spacing the book itself has, and the Hughes approved spacing is more visually pleasing to me.)


This poem has been my favorite for nearly a year now. Dr. Organ required it as part of our British Literature II class; but we never covered it in class. Instead, we discussed the less beautiful, more typical poetry by Hughes such as "The Owl" and "Pike". Hughes, throughout his career, was known for his jarring word and subject choices, along with a rather pessimistic view. Many feminists hate him, blaming him for the demise of his late wife Sylvia Plath; but many neglect his lovely collection called Birthday Letters published first in 1998, the year of his death. Many considered Hughes callused toward his wife's suicide because he rarely spoke of it, and seemingly never wrote of it--Birthday Letters showed a different side of the poet--a side affected by loss, a side showing vulnerable humanity. While in London last spring, my lovely then-fiancee-now-wife purchased this collection for me--what a wonderful Piper-Pal present.

I encountered "Daffodils" while reading along in the back house during the spring semester of my senior year of college. It was, and still is, the only poem that has brought tears to my eyes. The few lines, "Our lives were still a raid on our own good luck. /We knew we'd live for ever. We had not learned / What a fleeting glance of the everlasting / Daffodils are. Never identified / The nuptial flight of the rarest ephemera - / Our own days!" still gives me chills. I cannot fathom losing my wife, and even further from my understanding is the ability to present such powerful emotion in a succinct poem. As Wordsworth said (and Dr. Elliott quoted incessantly), poetry is "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility," and Hughes has mastered such recollection and reflection--life supplied the overflow of powerful feeling.

It's a bit puerile of me to begin my literary blog exploration with a poem I love based on sheer emotional/aesthetic value; but that's what's happening. Most of my literary posts won't deal with poetry because it's a form with which I am not comfortable in my skills as an explicator; but I so love this poem that I had to include it--especially since we didn't get to discuss it in class so long ago. Thanks for indulging me in my literary exploration, I hope you're not too bored.