Robert Frost.

At my good friend Daniel's request, I will be writing this post about Robert Frost, who is his favorite.

Mr. Frost was born in 1874 in San Francisco, California. His parents were both teachers, and his father also worked as a journalist. This may have been an inspiration for the young Frost, who knows. His father died when he was about 10 years old, and he & his family relocated to Massachusetts.

While much of Frost's poetry depicts rural life, he grew up primarily in the city. He attended Dartmouth University, where he was a member of a fraternity. After two years there, he left to return home to teach. He later went on to do liberal arts classes at Harvard. After publishing his first poem (which earned him $15), he got married.

Frost's life was frequently struck by tragedy. When his father died, his family was left with just $8. His mother died from cancer in 1900. He had to have both his sister and one of his daughter's committed to a mental hospital - mental illness ran pretty heavily in his family. He himself occasionally suffered from severe bouts of depression. Of his 6 children, only 2 outlived him. One of them committed suicide. And his wife died of heart failure after they were married for about 40 years. Pretty disheartening, but it only made him grow stronger as both a man and a writer. As he once said:

"I can sum up in three words everything I've learned about life -- it goes on."

After World War I, he purchased a farm in New Hampshire, where he spent much of his life and which inspired much of his poetry. The wall he described in his poem "Mending Wall" has been a favorite feature of his farm for many decades, as today this farmhouse is a museum known as The Frost Place. 

At the age of 86, two years before the end of his life, Frost read one of his poems at the inauguration of President Kennedy. When he died, his tombstone was engraved with the epitaph:

"I had a lover's quarrel with the world."

A beautiful line from one of his poems.

So why is Frost such an important poet?

Because of his extremely realistic poetry. He wrote about rural life as it had never been written about in his day, and he did it superbly well. Not only that, but he often used these settings and images to portray the much deeper philosophy surrounding them, and used a lot of heavy metaphors. He was awarded 4 Pulitzer Prizes for his writing, and inspired millions of poets both young and old across America for decades. An inspiring man, all in all.

Here he is one of his most famous poems. If you've never read this, you must've attended high school in a crater on Mars. Its called "The Road Not Taken".

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

SJ

#5

From May 2007, which was hard times if there ever were hard times. Its amazing to look back at how far we've come in life. This is one of my favorites, ever. Dear 17 year old Sierra, please give me some of your magic (you didn't even know you had it). This is called "aphasiac years" ("aphasia" being a language disorder that in severe forms can make you unable to read, write, or speak).

-

they say she was an octave below
the title of mistress, lady, gunslinger
of his supposed holy war.

his eggshell teeth hard as slate, diamonds,
paper-boy hat askew while he
played the tambourine for her body.

someday (while swallowing oriental leaves,
his tonsils scratched by their cross-stitched
brown hands, fingers spread, as though welcoming)
he would imagine her as substance and pray
on her sister's wooden pearls
for the sight of her coral-reef,
rippled beauty to materialize for his pen,
for his physical shell to stop alienating.

instead she melts into the slick,
frictionless agony of night,
knowing he will never grow while held
in the promise of something black,
not her skyscraper fingertips crushing
into his eavesdropped world.

a country where it is dusk;
the sky is overdosing on too many thoughts,
and crawling home for her bones.



SJ


New prompt?! Write a poem about something blue. It doesn't matter what. Just do it.

#4

rough draft. 

-

my friends & i

we bear imaginary children

in the caverns of our minds

compare the luminous sparkle of

emerald eyes

to our own

to the strange searchlights

of former lovers

wishing to cast off two headed
monsters

who suck the pale pink sweetness of electricity

from fragile forms

tearing their way inside 

with sharpened talons pointed at
the fluttering throats
of swans

tearful words that plead
to spare sculpture,

eyes frightened of torn painted worlds,

feet filled with crumbling plaster

constructed tin islands from ashtrays

which are smoldered upon
the shells of bodies

breasts and hips

drifting along calmly

gray mirazes like clouds

they could pass through

with only the lightest exhale

at the end of the day
we stand in dusk's
marble blue snow

watch as the headlights fall from

the moist hilltops
like pearls from a broken string

they scream
like our own monsters in the darkness

as the stars are lighted one by one

by god's weary hands

guiding us

gently into a still violet morning

where we simply are

no

one



SJ

#3

This one is from the very first summer I moved to St. John's, in 2008. I had a lot on my mind. It is entitled "cataclysm", most appropriately. I've never had a stranger time.

-

shouting hello from the opaline rooftops
of this firefly city,
cradling my epic collection
of concerns.

seated here between flesh-colored,
breathing walls,
filling invisible cages
with hazy thoughts
drawn by children in chalk.
they resemble missing string
cat's cradle patterns.

there's a girl wearing
judas tree flowers
in a serpentine coil around
her shell-like form.
she is unraveling slowly through
a labyrinth of broken windows
(you say
i bore this maze)

not a hair touches the
fractured panes, her
cold flesh strays from
broken glass

she wants the knowledge
at the end, she wants
the quiescent bones
fashioned into a harp
that will sing to her
in veracious tones

desires the bitter taste
of dust, to wake up at the depths
of the ocean, all things
azure

(a glass of water
at the foot of your bed)

crawling through the fibers of time
as they loosen,

she knows how all this will
deconstruct, whose hands
will tear out the first
shred

but she has only
shown me
snapshots.

-

Now, friends. Its time for prompt #2! For me this week, I want you to write a poem about summertime. Yes, the oldest subject in the great book of stomped on poetic subjects, but how can it not inspire? Everytime I see the morning light shining green through the leaves my heart beats a little bit faster.

Send me your writings, so that they may be put up! This week's featured poet will be Robert Frost, as recommended by my friend Daniel (his favorite), so that will be up soon, I promise!  If you have any Frost poems you'd like to see along with the feature, you're also free to email them to me. Again, my email address is:

growupandblowaway@gmail.com

I hope to hear from you guys soon <3




SJ