Please do write more about him! He strikes a nerve for sure. That last stanza in In The Winter Woods Alone equates the felled tree in Nature with the back swing of the axe. Maybe? I see that the retreat is also his trudge back home through the snowy woods. But I think of our month of Darwin... and I remember SJ Gould using Frost in some of his writing and lectures. This can't be coincidence. Frost seems often to play with ideas that touch the point where Nature and thought overlap. Design, for instance, is Darwinian and paradoxical. Maybe when the axe is in the back swing considerations go out the window. Then comes the next blow.
I see for Nature no defeat
In one tree’s overthrow
Or for myself in my retreat
For yet another blow.
Why is the line "For yet another blow" and not "From yet another blow"?
He retreated in order to make another blow — ie the retreat was not for escape but for respite before another blow (chop) at the tree
A great piece. Thank you.
glad you liked it! I might write more about him...
Thanks for writing about Into My Own. I wasn't familiar with it.
Please do write more about him! He strikes a nerve for sure. That last stanza in In The Winter Woods Alone equates the felled tree in Nature with the back swing of the axe. Maybe? I see that the retreat is also his trudge back home through the snowy woods. But I think of our month of Darwin... and I remember SJ Gould using Frost in some of his writing and lectures. This can't be coincidence. Frost seems often to play with ideas that touch the point where Nature and thought overlap. Design, for instance, is Darwinian and paradoxical. Maybe when the axe is in the back swing considerations go out the window. Then comes the next blow.
He was, remarkably considering my young age and lack of life experience at the time, the first American poet I read avidly. Thank you.
A very good place to start!
Thank you! I feel like I still have more to say too