In 1916 after having sold the family farm and retreating to England where he published, A Boy's Will and North of Boston, Robert Frost released his third collection, Mountain Interval.
He had just returned to America and was offered a contract with Henry Holt Publishing, who managed to pick up the American rights to his first two books. Included in Mountain Interval were The Road Not Taken, Birches and The Oven Bird, among others. The Road Not Taken and Birches reached iconic status decades ago.
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Birches is presented as a biographical narrative in that it draws from memory and incorporates personal experience. This evening I'm drawn in to his experience when the voice changes in the forty second line and the poet shifts into the first person singular to testify:
".....So was I once myself a swinger of birches;
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open..."
Mr. Frost, you had a good life though it was never easy. The heart ache and disappointment you suffered were more than most could bear. When you speak of being, "..weary of considerations," and say "...life is too much like a pathless wood..." I get it.
And so tonight I'm medicating on poetry as the world passes by.
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