From: Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]>
nice to be supported, Rebecca; but... could one transpose Frost to the mid
west say
thing about frost is that he played up his image a lot
Yes, Lawrence, I think you're right about frost playing up the
image of the wise New England farmer, oddly perhaps, given
that he was born in San Francisco, had his first book published
in England, and was, by most accounts, a terrible farmer, so
his poetic persona is very much a creation of that. And
it's difficult to not think of that in reading his work.
But, on the page, I think many of his poems could be
transposed to the midwest or other, as long as rural,
places in the US. Even in those poems that depend upon
some New England cultural tradition like "Mending Wall,"
for my students, never having seen a stone fence, are
always baffled at this ritual of mending, frost creates a
speaker who is not 'of' New England, who ironically
questions the neighbor who is esconced in traditional
silence and activity. frost, I think, was too ambitious
and shrewd a poet to adopt a merely regional voice,
and I don't hear a New England cadence or accent or
voice in his work, and so, yes, I think the work could
be transposed. Though that's perhaps impossible given
how thoroughly the persona was cultivated.
Best,
Rebecca
Rebecca Seiferle
www.thedrunkenboat.com
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