Apples and Frost

I have been thinking about Frost's poem After Apple Picking since Tuesday when I read it on Seattle poet T Clear's blog - as part of the Tuesday Poem - and watched Frost read it there (thanks to a crazy digital animator on youtube). It is unbelievably moving and an example of the sort of poetry I am currently smitten with - poetry that appears personal but really is a hand grabbing your throat ...

Such images here, such writing. The extract below, for example, has risen up before me unexpectedly throughout the day today ... that 'shimmer' in the sight ... the 's' and 'm' sounds that hum between lines...the poignancy of 'I am drowsing off' (the whole poem and a lovely photo of picked apples can be found at T Clear's blog).

I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples; I am drowsing off.
I cannot shake the shimmer from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the water-trough,
And held against the world of hoary grass.



Some other wonderful poems that are 'shimmers' of nature can be found on Tuesday Poem this week - HERE and HERE.

The ride of the melting poem

Terrific quote here from Robert Frost on the making of a poem. How it must 'ride on its own melting' and not be 'worried into being'. Apposite for me given my Tuesday Poem 'Pink T-shirt'  (previous post). Written over 20 years ago it felt to me that, once long-ago melted and fresh, it had 'set' like jelly, and therefore, despite any misgivings I had about it, was no longer able to be stirred and made into something fresh again. Frost assures me the preciousness of a poem is its having run itself once and taken a poet with it. That, he says, is its freshness. Of course he's right. The poem knew that - calling from the pile of the great unread 'pick me' and sliding away when I tried to pin down a word or phrase. To change it would have been, strangely, to change the moment or the way I perceived the moment. To be disloyal, somehow. How astonishing it is, how gratifying, to see the reader comments on 'Pink T-shirt' at the bottom of the post, their immediate loyalty, their fresh regard.



Thanks to poet Saradha Koirala for gleaning the Frost quote.