Robert Frost's The Tuft of Flowers
Imagine that you have gone on a family holiday in the September break, right before your HSC exams. You’re far away from all your friends, somewhere in the Blue Mountains, and you’ve negotiated with your family to get the mornings to yourself so you can study in the local library. Frustrated to find that in this country town the library doesn’t even open til 10am, you fetch yourself a coffee and wait outside the doors. At last they slide open and you wander through the space to find somewhere that looks conducive to working. Everything is unfamiliar. The freshly opened library is mostly empty except for a few tired looking parents with little kids and a bunch of old people reading newspapers. At last you make your way to the back of the library and find some study desks with nifty little lamps. The view out the huge windows is mesmerising. You sit and just stare for a while. Then your eye is caught by a little something that seems out of place.
You look. This is what you see.
Suddenly, you don’t feel so alone.
Imagine that you have gone on a family holiday in the September break, right before your HSC exams. You’re far away from all your friends, somewhere in the Blue Mountains, and you’ve negotiated with your family to get the mornings to yourself so you can study in the local library. Frustrated to find that in this country town the library doesn’t even open til 10am, you fetch yourself a coffee and wait outside the doors. At last they slide open and you wander through the space to find somewhere that looks conducive to working. Everything is unfamiliar. The freshly opened library is mostly empty except for a few tired looking parents with little kids and a bunch of old people reading newspapers. At last you make your way to the back of the library and find some study desks with nifty little lamps. The view out the huge windows is mesmerising. You sit and just stare for a while. Then your eye is caught by a little something that seems out of place.
You look. This is what you see.
Suddenly, you don’t feel so alone.
Read the poem slowly and carefully. You might like to listen to Frost reading this poem himself here:
http://town.hall.org/radio/HarperAudio/012294_harp_ITH.html
Under the first title The Road Not Taken:
audio for The Tuft of Flowers starts at 8:17
1. What parallels can you see between the scenario described above and the experience of the persona in The Tuft of Flowers?
2. Try to describe the impression you get of the rhythm and structure of the poem. It may help to think about or research some of the following features of this poem:
· iambic pentameter
· rhyming couplets
· end stops
· masculine rhymes
3. How do these features contribute to the feeling that the reader tromps through the fields with the persona?
4. What sense do you get of the following characters or elements in the poem? Who or what are they? How do they function in the poem? What imagery or other technique/s are associated with each character/element?
a) the persona (the turner)
b) the mower
c) the butterfly
d) the tuft of flowers
5. Find words, phrases or images in the poem that have to do with:
a) looking
b) listening
c) spirit rather than flesh
d) companionship
6. In the original edition of Frost’s collection A Boy’s Will, this poem was described as being “about fellowship”. What happens in the persona between these two moments in the poem?
And I must be, as he had been, −alone,
‘As all must be,’ I said within my heart,
‘Whether they work together or apart.’
and
‘Men work together,’ I told him from the heart,
Whether they work together or apart.’
7. What evidence can you find in the poem that the persona becomes more aware of his surroundings as a result of his changed outlook?
8. What, if anything, does this poem suggest about the following?
a) work
b) fate/chance
c) choice
d) the season
9. Some critics regard the writing of poetry as another theme here – elsewhere he uses mowing as an image for the creative process. This poem could suggest that poetry can be a lonely pursuit until you realise that other poets (like the mower) have gone before you in the celebration of beauty. Frost feels a sense of fellowship with these earlier poets. In 1957 he said that The Tuft of Flowers was “against the idea that you write poetry just to show yourself off”, a point which seems to be made (about the other mower) in the line “Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him”. What further parallels can you see in this poem between the activity and reflection of the persona and the idea of fellowship between poets?
10. Go back to the black and white image from the library scenario above. Write a brief piece (prose or verse) in response to your discovery of the postcard, that in some way draws on what you’ve just been exploring in The Tuft of Flowers.
11. How does Robert Frost’s The Tuft of Flowers represent discovery?
To look into another text that explores this discovery of a sense of camaraderie created across space and time, you may like to listen to a song called Virginia Woolf by The Indigo Girls.
The lyrics are here: http://www.metrolyrics.com/virginia-woolf-lyrics-indigo-girls.html
And here’s a YouTube clip with the audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTs9H2AdXjk
http://town.hall.org/radio/HarperAudio/012294_harp_ITH.html
Under the first title The Road Not Taken:
audio for The Tuft of Flowers starts at 8:17
1. What parallels can you see between the scenario described above and the experience of the persona in The Tuft of Flowers?
2. Try to describe the impression you get of the rhythm and structure of the poem. It may help to think about or research some of the following features of this poem:
· iambic pentameter
· rhyming couplets
· end stops
· masculine rhymes
3. How do these features contribute to the feeling that the reader tromps through the fields with the persona?
4. What sense do you get of the following characters or elements in the poem? Who or what are they? How do they function in the poem? What imagery or other technique/s are associated with each character/element?
a) the persona (the turner)
b) the mower
c) the butterfly
d) the tuft of flowers
5. Find words, phrases or images in the poem that have to do with:
a) looking
b) listening
c) spirit rather than flesh
d) companionship
6. In the original edition of Frost’s collection A Boy’s Will, this poem was described as being “about fellowship”. What happens in the persona between these two moments in the poem?
And I must be, as he had been, −alone,
‘As all must be,’ I said within my heart,
‘Whether they work together or apart.’
and
‘Men work together,’ I told him from the heart,
Whether they work together or apart.’
7. What evidence can you find in the poem that the persona becomes more aware of his surroundings as a result of his changed outlook?
8. What, if anything, does this poem suggest about the following?
a) work
b) fate/chance
c) choice
d) the season
9. Some critics regard the writing of poetry as another theme here – elsewhere he uses mowing as an image for the creative process. This poem could suggest that poetry can be a lonely pursuit until you realise that other poets (like the mower) have gone before you in the celebration of beauty. Frost feels a sense of fellowship with these earlier poets. In 1957 he said that The Tuft of Flowers was “against the idea that you write poetry just to show yourself off”, a point which seems to be made (about the other mower) in the line “Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him”. What further parallels can you see in this poem between the activity and reflection of the persona and the idea of fellowship between poets?
10. Go back to the black and white image from the library scenario above. Write a brief piece (prose or verse) in response to your discovery of the postcard, that in some way draws on what you’ve just been exploring in The Tuft of Flowers.
11. How does Robert Frost’s The Tuft of Flowers represent discovery?
To look into another text that explores this discovery of a sense of camaraderie created across space and time, you may like to listen to a song called Virginia Woolf by The Indigo Girls.
The lyrics are here: http://www.metrolyrics.com/virginia-woolf-lyrics-indigo-girls.html
And here’s a YouTube clip with the audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTs9H2AdXjk
Robert Frost's Mending Wall
1. First, what are the purposes of a fence? Make as complete a list as you can.
According to Frost, Mending Wall takes up a theme, where The Tuft of Flowers lays it down. North of Boston (London: David Nutt, 1914). In symbolic terms it could be said that the wall in Mending Wall is a barrier and the tuft in The Tuft of Flowers is a bond.
2. Let’s start with the neighbour’s proverb - “Good fences make good neighbours.” What do you think this expression is supposed to mean?
3. What would you conclude about a person who relied heavily on proverbs or idioms?
4. Notice what the persona uses to attack the idea. How might things be different if each owned cows rather than an apple orchard and a pine forest?
5. Frost has said that much of his poetry is mischeviousness. List all of the references to or examples of playing, mischief, games and magic/fantasy in the poem. What is the overall effect of these?
6. Here’s some text from askthebuilder.com on the topic of building a retaining wall:
“Frost damage to retaining walls can be sinister. As soil freezes it expands. On a normal flat area, this expansion force is normally in the up and down direction. Builders know this as frost heave, and water-works employees know that this pressure cracks water mains underground.
But the frost can push sideways when it is adjacent to a retaining wall. Frost will relieve its expansion pressure using the path of least resistance. Since the ground freezes from the top down, it pushes sideways against the top of the retaining wall where the leverage force against the wall is greatest.”
So, what is it that doesn’t love a wall? What techniques has Frost employed here? What has he achieved? How does this fit in with the poet’s theme of mischief?
7. What do you learn about the neighbour from the last eight lines of the poem?
8. Here’s an extract from a conversation between Frost and an author friend, Cecil Day Lewis. They make some interesting observations about Frost’s life in the country and how that may have contributed to a poem like this one:
LEWIS : It seems to me that possibly you have an advantage in the writing of narrative by living in a fairly remote place: in the country, where small things that happen - things that are gossiped about - are extremely important. I should think that is a good foundation, isn't it, for telling the sort of stories that you tell? In the next village but one, they would refuse to admit that you existed, and you refuse to admit they exist; so in the country you're in a close circle of a community, and anything that happens there is potential drama and story .
FROST: Yes, I've picked up many of them all my life. And they're all dialogue, aren't they, nearly?
LEWIS: Quite a lot of them.
FROST: Yes, there's a story implied in every case. They are rather the sort of thing you speak of; they're gossip. And one of the three great things in the world is gossip, you know. First there's religion; and then there's science; and there's - and then there's friendly gossip. Those are the three - the three great things. Philosophy is just a thing that trims religion, you know - that prunes it and all that. And you've got science. And you've got this: the biggest of all, is gossip - our interest in each other .
LEWIS: Yes, which is really based on a kind of hero-worship, isn't it? Or rather a lot of hero-worship is based on that, isn't it?
FROST: Yes, yes.
LEWIS: And I suppose that anyone who is going to write a narrative poem now has to have the kind of interest in human beings that often comes out as hero-worship.
FROST: That's it. It is hero-worship, you see, and one of the things that makes you go is making a hero out of somebody that nobody else had ever noticed was a hero.
LEWIS: Yes, exactly, yes.
FROST: You pick up the unconsidered person.
LEWIS: Yes, and of course that is what gossip does, in a small community: it makes heroes, doesn't it - or villains - out of our neighbors? But they're big anyway.
FROST: Yes. Do you know, that's interesting to hear you use the word that way, when people are saying there's no such thing as heroism left. Some of the talk is that way. I know of a book of history that says heroism is out of date. But it's in everything. It's in making a book, you know. And it takes a hero to make a poem.
What do you think of this conversation? Does it help you to gain any insight into what Frost might be exploring in this poem? How could the neighbour in Mending Wall be the "hero" or "unconsidered person" that Frost refers to?
9. “What finally emerges from Frost's poem is the idea that the stock reply—unexamined wisdom from the past—seals off the possibility of further thought and communication. When thought has frozen into folk expression, language itself becomes another wall, one unresponsive to that which it encircles and given over to fulfilling a new and perhaps unintended function. Meeting once a year and insulated from anything beyond simple interaction by their well-defined duties and limits, these "good" neighbors turn out to be almost incommunicative.” George Montiero
Write a detailed comparison of The Tuft of Flowers with Mending Wall. In one, the persona seems to discover that men work together, even when alone, that there can be communication without words, beyond physical presence and across time. In the other, the persona discovers that communication breaks down even as men actually converse. These poems seem to work as statement and counter statement or theme and anti-theme.
10. With regard to the structure of this poem, Frost, when addressing students at Baxter Hall, Williams College in in October 1960, said "Just as there can be religion outside the church and education outside the university, there can be good poetry outside the institution of verse. I belong to the institution outside poetry in the prose poem I deliver before my poetry readings." What is the effect of the structure of this poem?
11. How is discovery represented in Robert Frost’s Mending Wall as opposed to The Tuft of Flowers?
If you’re stuck, you might like to consider using one of these sample topic sentences:
In human interaction, discovery can come out of bonds and out of barriers.
Robert Frost represents shared work as a channel for discovering one’s fellow man.
Exploring a physical landscape can lead to the discovery of an inner landscape.
1. First, what are the purposes of a fence? Make as complete a list as you can.
According to Frost, Mending Wall takes up a theme, where The Tuft of Flowers lays it down. North of Boston (London: David Nutt, 1914). In symbolic terms it could be said that the wall in Mending Wall is a barrier and the tuft in The Tuft of Flowers is a bond.
2. Let’s start with the neighbour’s proverb - “Good fences make good neighbours.” What do you think this expression is supposed to mean?
3. What would you conclude about a person who relied heavily on proverbs or idioms?
4. Notice what the persona uses to attack the idea. How might things be different if each owned cows rather than an apple orchard and a pine forest?
5. Frost has said that much of his poetry is mischeviousness. List all of the references to or examples of playing, mischief, games and magic/fantasy in the poem. What is the overall effect of these?
6. Here’s some text from askthebuilder.com on the topic of building a retaining wall:
“Frost damage to retaining walls can be sinister. As soil freezes it expands. On a normal flat area, this expansion force is normally in the up and down direction. Builders know this as frost heave, and water-works employees know that this pressure cracks water mains underground.
But the frost can push sideways when it is adjacent to a retaining wall. Frost will relieve its expansion pressure using the path of least resistance. Since the ground freezes from the top down, it pushes sideways against the top of the retaining wall where the leverage force against the wall is greatest.”
So, what is it that doesn’t love a wall? What techniques has Frost employed here? What has he achieved? How does this fit in with the poet’s theme of mischief?
7. What do you learn about the neighbour from the last eight lines of the poem?
8. Here’s an extract from a conversation between Frost and an author friend, Cecil Day Lewis. They make some interesting observations about Frost’s life in the country and how that may have contributed to a poem like this one:
LEWIS : It seems to me that possibly you have an advantage in the writing of narrative by living in a fairly remote place: in the country, where small things that happen - things that are gossiped about - are extremely important. I should think that is a good foundation, isn't it, for telling the sort of stories that you tell? In the next village but one, they would refuse to admit that you existed, and you refuse to admit they exist; so in the country you're in a close circle of a community, and anything that happens there is potential drama and story .
FROST: Yes, I've picked up many of them all my life. And they're all dialogue, aren't they, nearly?
LEWIS: Quite a lot of them.
FROST: Yes, there's a story implied in every case. They are rather the sort of thing you speak of; they're gossip. And one of the three great things in the world is gossip, you know. First there's religion; and then there's science; and there's - and then there's friendly gossip. Those are the three - the three great things. Philosophy is just a thing that trims religion, you know - that prunes it and all that. And you've got science. And you've got this: the biggest of all, is gossip - our interest in each other .
LEWIS: Yes, which is really based on a kind of hero-worship, isn't it? Or rather a lot of hero-worship is based on that, isn't it?
FROST: Yes, yes.
LEWIS: And I suppose that anyone who is going to write a narrative poem now has to have the kind of interest in human beings that often comes out as hero-worship.
FROST: That's it. It is hero-worship, you see, and one of the things that makes you go is making a hero out of somebody that nobody else had ever noticed was a hero.
LEWIS: Yes, exactly, yes.
FROST: You pick up the unconsidered person.
LEWIS: Yes, and of course that is what gossip does, in a small community: it makes heroes, doesn't it - or villains - out of our neighbors? But they're big anyway.
FROST: Yes. Do you know, that's interesting to hear you use the word that way, when people are saying there's no such thing as heroism left. Some of the talk is that way. I know of a book of history that says heroism is out of date. But it's in everything. It's in making a book, you know. And it takes a hero to make a poem.
What do you think of this conversation? Does it help you to gain any insight into what Frost might be exploring in this poem? How could the neighbour in Mending Wall be the "hero" or "unconsidered person" that Frost refers to?
9. “What finally emerges from Frost's poem is the idea that the stock reply—unexamined wisdom from the past—seals off the possibility of further thought and communication. When thought has frozen into folk expression, language itself becomes another wall, one unresponsive to that which it encircles and given over to fulfilling a new and perhaps unintended function. Meeting once a year and insulated from anything beyond simple interaction by their well-defined duties and limits, these "good" neighbors turn out to be almost incommunicative.” George Montiero
Write a detailed comparison of The Tuft of Flowers with Mending Wall. In one, the persona seems to discover that men work together, even when alone, that there can be communication without words, beyond physical presence and across time. In the other, the persona discovers that communication breaks down even as men actually converse. These poems seem to work as statement and counter statement or theme and anti-theme.
10. With regard to the structure of this poem, Frost, when addressing students at Baxter Hall, Williams College in in October 1960, said "Just as there can be religion outside the church and education outside the university, there can be good poetry outside the institution of verse. I belong to the institution outside poetry in the prose poem I deliver before my poetry readings." What is the effect of the structure of this poem?
11. How is discovery represented in Robert Frost’s Mending Wall as opposed to The Tuft of Flowers?
If you’re stuck, you might like to consider using one of these sample topic sentences:
In human interaction, discovery can come out of bonds and out of barriers.
Robert Frost represents shared work as a channel for discovering one’s fellow man.
Exploring a physical landscape can lead to the discovery of an inner landscape.
Robert Frost’s Fire and Ice
Before you read this poem, you may like to have a read of Canto 32 of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno.
http://www.online-literature.com/dante/inferno/32/
“Inferno” is Italian for “hell”. This is the first section of Dante’s 14th century epic poem The Divine Comedy. In Canto 32, the betrayers of their own kind are described as being plunged, while in a fiery hell, up to their necks in ice: "a lake so bound with ice, / It did not took like water, but like a glass ... right clear / I saw, where sinners are preserved in ice."
1. The language in Fire and Ice has been described as “laconic”, “casually understated”, “insistently mundane”, “typically unemphatic” and at the same time “sensuous”, “terrifying” and “profoundly disquieting”. How do you think Frost achieves these contradictory effects simultaneously?
2. What is the effect of linking the following words in the poem? fire, tasted, desire, hold, favour (Comment on alliteration, assonance and consonance.)
3. By contrast, what is the effect of linking these words? Ice, think, know, enough, hate, say, suffice (Comment on alliteration, assonance and consonance.)
4. On the surface, this is a poem debating whether or not the world will end in the biblical apocalyptic visions of destruction by fire, mirrored by the scientific possibility of the earth ultimately moving too close to the sun, or whether it might end in ice, brought about by the ultimate death of the sun, the star on which we are reliant. You may like to read the story of how a prominent astronomer, Harlow Shapley, was convinced that he inspired the poem: http://galileospendulum.org/2013/10/02/of-fire-and-ice-and-harlow-shapley/
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/fireice.htm (scroll down to Tom Hansen)
However, as both the articles above argue, Shapley misses the point.
Look at the last quatrain of another poem by Frost entitled Desert Places:
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
Here is what critic Tom Hansen has to say about these two poems (emphasis mine):
The colloquial "scare" thinly masks the terror of this poem--not the terror that ripples through us when we vividly realize and almost physically apprehend the limitless emptiness of outer space, but the even greater tenor that washes over us when we realize that the ultimate desert places lie within us.
So it is with "Fire and Ice." Outer blatantly symbolizes inner. Fire is directly equated with desire, the kind that kindles antagonism and conflict. Ice is equated with hate. Fire and ice are born in the dark reaches of inner space, in the smoldering, ice-sheathed human heart. However, if the height of art is to conceal the art, then Frost is a consummate artist, because the terror in the poem is so casually understated that it slips by some readers undetected. The understatement is most evident in the fifth and last lines of the poem. "But if it had to perish twice," Frost says, as if the incineration of the world were little more than a passing sickness. "And would suffice," he concludes in a typically unemphatic last line. The use of first-person pronouns in lines 3, 4, and 6 also quietly contributes to the understatement, suggesting that the poem is only an expression of lightly held personal opinion. This deceptive strategy of understatement leads Shapley and Pobojewski to interpret the poem as idle cosmic speculation rather than an astute diagnosis of the chronic malfunction of the human heart.
As critic Tom Hansen says above, this poem could be considered “an astute diagnosis of the chronic malfunction of the human heart.” How can you talk about this poem with regard to discovery?
5. Here is a list of some of the techniques Frost employs in Fire and Ice. For each item listed below:
· Define the term.
· Identify an example of the technique in Fire and Ice.
· Explain how the technique is used in your example
· Describe the effect - how does it contribute to the theme of discovering the power of human emotions?
Alliteration
Assonance
Enjambment
Contrast
Anticlimax
Juxtaposition
Rhyme
First-person pronouns
Understatement
Tense (past/present)
Pun (ice, twice, suffice)
Repetition (ice, twice, suffice)
Tone
Before you read this poem, you may like to have a read of Canto 32 of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno.
http://www.online-literature.com/dante/inferno/32/
“Inferno” is Italian for “hell”. This is the first section of Dante’s 14th century epic poem The Divine Comedy. In Canto 32, the betrayers of their own kind are described as being plunged, while in a fiery hell, up to their necks in ice: "a lake so bound with ice, / It did not took like water, but like a glass ... right clear / I saw, where sinners are preserved in ice."
1. The language in Fire and Ice has been described as “laconic”, “casually understated”, “insistently mundane”, “typically unemphatic” and at the same time “sensuous”, “terrifying” and “profoundly disquieting”. How do you think Frost achieves these contradictory effects simultaneously?
2. What is the effect of linking the following words in the poem? fire, tasted, desire, hold, favour (Comment on alliteration, assonance and consonance.)
3. By contrast, what is the effect of linking these words? Ice, think, know, enough, hate, say, suffice (Comment on alliteration, assonance and consonance.)
4. On the surface, this is a poem debating whether or not the world will end in the biblical apocalyptic visions of destruction by fire, mirrored by the scientific possibility of the earth ultimately moving too close to the sun, or whether it might end in ice, brought about by the ultimate death of the sun, the star on which we are reliant. You may like to read the story of how a prominent astronomer, Harlow Shapley, was convinced that he inspired the poem: http://galileospendulum.org/2013/10/02/of-fire-and-ice-and-harlow-shapley/
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/fireice.htm (scroll down to Tom Hansen)
However, as both the articles above argue, Shapley misses the point.
Look at the last quatrain of another poem by Frost entitled Desert Places:
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
Here is what critic Tom Hansen has to say about these two poems (emphasis mine):
The colloquial "scare" thinly masks the terror of this poem--not the terror that ripples through us when we vividly realize and almost physically apprehend the limitless emptiness of outer space, but the even greater tenor that washes over us when we realize that the ultimate desert places lie within us.
So it is with "Fire and Ice." Outer blatantly symbolizes inner. Fire is directly equated with desire, the kind that kindles antagonism and conflict. Ice is equated with hate. Fire and ice are born in the dark reaches of inner space, in the smoldering, ice-sheathed human heart. However, if the height of art is to conceal the art, then Frost is a consummate artist, because the terror in the poem is so casually understated that it slips by some readers undetected. The understatement is most evident in the fifth and last lines of the poem. "But if it had to perish twice," Frost says, as if the incineration of the world were little more than a passing sickness. "And would suffice," he concludes in a typically unemphatic last line. The use of first-person pronouns in lines 3, 4, and 6 also quietly contributes to the understatement, suggesting that the poem is only an expression of lightly held personal opinion. This deceptive strategy of understatement leads Shapley and Pobojewski to interpret the poem as idle cosmic speculation rather than an astute diagnosis of the chronic malfunction of the human heart.
As critic Tom Hansen says above, this poem could be considered “an astute diagnosis of the chronic malfunction of the human heart.” How can you talk about this poem with regard to discovery?
5. Here is a list of some of the techniques Frost employs in Fire and Ice. For each item listed below:
· Define the term.
· Identify an example of the technique in Fire and Ice.
· Explain how the technique is used in your example
· Describe the effect - how does it contribute to the theme of discovering the power of human emotions?
Alliteration
Assonance
Enjambment
Contrast
Anticlimax
Juxtaposition
Rhyme
First-person pronouns
Understatement
Tense (past/present)
Pun (ice, twice, suffice)
Repetition (ice, twice, suffice)
Tone