Riffing on Robert Frost

I took the road less traveled

And later, in that New England chill

I met Robert Frost.

We talked, and conversed

About fences, and posts,

And autumn-time poignancy.

I soon recognized that,

Per the sages of the East,

The only good poet is a dead poet.

So, I shot Robert Frost,

And pushed him over the fence again.

Good fences good neighbors make.

It has been suggested that I misunderstand Frost in his original poem "Mending Wall." Rather, per that Wikipedia link, I see myself as picking up on just a couple of the themes of what is indeed a complex poem.

And, per what I said to an online friend on my Google Plus account, I partially agree, partially disagree. And, by "partially agreeing, partially disagreeing," arguably, I do pick up on the idea that Frost identifies explicitly with neither the narrator nor the neighbor.

Per this link, which would be rephrased as what my dad said, "Trust everybody but still cut the cards," Ben Franklin agreed with me.

And, per this roundup of professional literary critics, I may not be interpreting Frost so wrongly anyway. If, per the second critique, an unspoken punnery of playing on the word "Frost," as in the author's name, is not just "Something there is that doesn't love a wall," but that runs from there through the whole piece, then I've interpreted him on that one particular theme at least semi-correctly after all.

So, Frost remains shot, and pushed back over his fence.

Besides that, per a later critique which includes a quote from Frost, he arguably explicitly supported some sort of reader-response criticism.

George Montiero notes:

Asked once about his intended meaning, Frost recast the question: "In my Mending Wall was my intention fulfilled with the characters portrayed and the atmosphere of the place?" Characteristically, he went on to answer obliquely.

I should be sorry if a single one of my poems stopped with either of those things—stopped anywhere in fact. My poems—I should suppose everybody's poems—are all set to trip the reader head foremost into the boundless. Ever since infancy I have had the habit of leaving my blocks carts chairs and such like ordinaries where people would be pretty sure to fall forward over them in the dark. Forward, you understand, and in the dark. I may leave my toys in the wrong place and so in vain. It is my intention we are speaking of—my innate mischievousness.

No other poem in the Frost canon better illustrates his manner—as he described it—and his overall poetic intention.

"Good fences good neighbors make."

There, I've deliberately modified Frost's order. Frankly, I think my meter and cadence are better than his.

 

And, yes I do, and I stand by that.

 

Update, June 13, 2025: The start of my poem is of course riffing on "The Road Not Taken," itself complex and often misunderstood. 

 

That said, it's generally not perversely misinterpreted, as literary critic Adam Plunkett does to "The Freedom of the Moon" in his "Life and Need," presented as a bio of the life of Frost's poetry, but before I slammed the cover shut, surely presenting itself as a bio of Frost. 

Man’s Mindset vs. God Grandeur

A riff on, but no apologies to, Gerard Manley Hopkins

MAN’S MINDSET

The world is charged with the mindset of man

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do we then now not think our plan?

Generations have gone, have gone, have gone;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wear’s man’s smudge and shares man’s smell; the soil

Is hard now, as foot can feel, worn to bone.

And in all this, nature is badly spent;

            There lies the dearest drearness deep down things;

And as the last lights of the black West went

            No morning at the brown brink eastward springs —

Spiritus Mundi flees from the rent

            World, pale with dead mist; no comfort it brings.

Card’nal, Card’nal

Indiana State Parks photo

CARD’NAL, CARD’NAL

Card’nal, Card’nal, trilling bright, 

In the forests, reddened sight; 

What wondrous hand or tool, 

Did frame thy beauty as a jew’l?

In the oaks, beneath the skies

Whence the fire of thine eyes;

And your majestic color-coat

You wear natural without gloat?

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the stirring of thy heart?

On what chords dare you aspire?

What hand bids you sing higher?

Thy brightened beak, tis also true, 

Doth to beauty accrue.

Yet your mate, in lesser garb

Holds not a jealous barb.

No craftsman at glowing forge 

Did your work divine disgorge 

No one smiled his work to see

Thy charms themselves just came to be.

Card’nal, Card’nal, trilling bright, 

In the forests, reddened sight; 

Nature’s blind hand as tool, 

Did frame thy beauty as a jew’l.

            — March 29, 2015, with nods, but no apologies, to William Blake

Fall Foliage Feelings

Some poetic thoughts inspired by late fall in Texas …

FALL FOLIAGE FEELINGS

The trees have gotten a little more bare;

A few more leaves just fell.

The weather, poised on a knife’s edge of impending change

High winds rise, fall, rise again and change direction,

While clouds mass, then dissipate,

And skies darken hither and yon.

A clear, bright sun hits a cobalt blue canvas,

Framing the fall-tinged red oaks’ leaf-dying beauty.

Poignancy, introspection and bits of melancholy

Are the hoped-for fruits of a leaf-dying soul —

Autumnal moods for autumnal days

In a sometimes sadness-gilded autumnal life.

Some poetic thoughts on the "real" cowboy Texas

LITTERED LANDSCAPES

Opportunisitic prickly pear

Prickly pear. Agave. Mountain cedar.

Patches of mesquite and the occasional crown of thorns.

Each sightly at times,

Picturesque, naturalistic.

But often, in the Texas Hill Country,

A sign of something else –

Man’s scarring of the soil,

Littered landscapes.

Opportunistic plants from dryland edges

Found their chance to invade

Overgrazed pasturelands, stony hills and cloudy draws.

When you eat that Texas beef on your plate,

The fuzzy-edged, grasping and extending fingers

Of the Chihuahuan Desert,

And its semidesert outliers,

Thank you.

When you admire an “authentic” Hill Country mock ranch

For artifice from drier lands

The desert flora thank you.

Yes, a few of the specimens were in place

Before Texas cattlemen, or “Old West” realtors

But not like this.

Beauty is in the eye – and the knowledge – of the beholder.

            Jan. 7, 2012

Nature is tenacious

A pinon pine on a crag above Wolf Creek Pass/My pic

Tenacious grasp
Pinon pine on mountain crag;
Solitary life.

That lone rugged tree
Lives without one remembrance,
Growing but dumbly.

A lesson for life
That roots are oft unconscious
But still need much luck,

Refuting some rich
Who social Darwinism
Gave them all their wealth.

Desert ambivalence: a poem

DESERT AMBIVALENCE

I love the desert — in small doses.
I love its variety, if sharp and sere,
Frm slickrock redness of Utah
To the tangled shrubbery of the Chihuahuan’s edges;
From the sky blues of the southern borderlands
To Death Valley’s raw, existential rigor.
I love it all.
But in small doses.
Without sky islands,
The Chihuahuan and eastern Sonoran would hold less charm.
Likewise for Death Valley without nearby Sierras.
As for the Great Basin?
Its sky islands seem smaller and poorer to me,
And have never touched me as much.
And, so it is —
Desert ambivance.

Nov. 10, 2010

OAKENTREE ALPENGLOW

Near sunset, during a walk,
The summer-ripened oak trees stood tall and proud,
And golden at top, like mountains
Bathed in end-of-day alpenglow.
No montane heights in flatland Texas
But those in the recesses of memory,
As the sight of warm-glowing treetops
Brought to mind images of Montana and Alberta
Vacation memories of glacial-carved peaks
Embracing, caressing, the near-twilight summer aura
As another long, well-laden day
Faded golden, then orange, then salmon.
Then back to today’s Texas oaken-glow,
As reverie faded to reality
And I focused on a walk
With an alpen-spring in my steps.

– May 31, 2009

THE COLORADO PLATEAU AT 30,000 FEET

Red rock hardpan
Sliced and slashed by canyons innumerate,
Dissected while desiccate —
A pulsing, beating, sun-engorged and throbbing
Red rock expanse,
Seen from six miles up.
Home to vacations, hikes and escapes,
Is far more sterile and lifeless in appearance,
Than when booted feet
Threading trails through cryptobiotic soil
Tread circular routes to nowhere, everywhere,
And all points in between,
Then back to nowhere again.

Steve Snyder
May 17, 2009

BOULDER PARK PICNIC TABLE

Some reflections from hiking in a Dallas park:
















Broken down and weather beaten,
Agéd, silent picnic table
Gladed inside multi-level
Understory, has seen it all.

Sit and think and ponder do I,
Bounded within parkland nature.
Would that picnic table would speak.
That, though, will not happen for me.

Answers? I must find them inside
Broken planking only watches
Ebbs and flows of live; it acts not.
So, then, knows not sorrow, anguish.

I, though, well know painful moments
Drift and doubt and struggle bitter.
Answers? Mine all must have actions.
Drift is the most painful of all.

Night Life (a poem)

The orangish sodium vapor glow
Brings out the yellow in the red oak’s green leaves.
The colors of our world have such sensitivity and delicateness
To be far away from full capture by any camera.

The sun-like warmth of the security light
Provides a tone of calm serenity to the night.
In the background, the drone of overused air conditioners
Provides an aural backdrop to the early fall chirps of crickets.

Meanwhile, my body relaxes and unwinds.
I sense the fiber-fullness of my stomach
And feel a touch of post-rain clammy heaviness in the night air.
While making myself aware of the cleanness of its scent.

Tonight,
It is good to be alive, good to be sensual, in the night air.