For National Poetry Month 2014, I have invited 17 authors and poets to guest post about source poems. In this series of essays, each writer has described a single poem's significance in his or her life.
Welcome Poetry Friday friends! Our May Flowers host is Katya at Write. Sketch. Repeat. May the Fourth be with you this weekend as you venture to a galaxy of poems far, far away (okay, Katya's Connecticut isn't that far), where the force will be with you.
Our series is drawing to a close. The final guest blogger is poet and novelist Toby Speed. Toby's recent move to New Hampshire deepened her connection to a favorite American poet. [Toby visited AuthorAmok in March to talk about inspiration. Read her post here.]
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| Toby Speed |
The journey began with the book itself, a book bound in blue
fabric that I covered with a brown paper grocery bag on which I printed in red,
“Collected Poems of Robert Frost,” along with my name and the year: 1970.
My father, an artist, had taken the book from his shelf of
treasured volumes in his basement workshop and given it to me. I was 17 and
completely in love with poetry. I gorged myself on it – everything from Poe to
Whitman to Plath to Ferlinghetti. But I loved no one more than Frost and the
gift of this book from my dad.
As I lay on the daybed in the makeshift bedroom I had set up
in our basement on Long Island and read the volume from cover to cover, the language
— so eloquent in its plainness — gave me the chills, and I wanted to experience
Frost’s stones and woodlands, his apples and snow. I wanted to be a swinger of
birches and a stopper by woods, although perhaps not a buzz saw user or wall mender. Mostly, I wanted to live in New
England, something that would not appear along the road in my own journey for
another 44 years.
Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken,” in particular has stayed
with me and whispered its lines every time I’ve made a decision, large or
small, in my life.
The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost
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.
I’ve been drawn to
less-traveled roads all my life. In my twenties, I abandoned plans to go into
advertising to take a lower-paying job that allowed me more time to write, a
risky proposition that made all the difference. In writing, I’ve shied away
from the mainstream to write along the edges, and I’ve consciously looked for
the edges in all of my life choices, sometimes doubting my sanity, like when I
learned to fly. Learning to navigate the world of pilots and pre-flight checks
and radio communications, clouds that pile up despite sunny weather briefings
and runways covered with deer, was a series of choices made mostly on weekends
when I was presented with plenty of other desirable (and less scary) ways to
fill my time. “I’ll save that for another day,” I’d think, but, as the poet and
I both knew, way led on to way, and I never came back.
Earlier this year I
found myself at a fork in the road. I’d recently married a man who’d lived for
many years in Vermont. Long Island had been my lifelong home, and it was now
ours. I was happy to stay in my familiar environment after retiring from my job
of twenty years; he wanted to return to New England. I carefully considered the
two paths before me, and once more the words of Robert Frost came back to
suggest that I take the other road, as just as fair. The view from my New
Hampshire window is of a field with tall pines and birches, beyond them the
mountains of Vermont, and beyond them, on certain evenings, an arresting
sunset.
Those diverging roads
— maddening! And the moment of choosing — bittersweet. And the outcome — a
world of difference.
I love the ease of
this poem, the surprise and the truth of it. Frost said it best.
“Like a piece of ice on a hot stove,” he wrote in his 1939
introduction to the collection, “the poem must ride on its own melting. A poem
may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being. Its
most precious quality will remain its having run itself and carried away the
poet with it. Read it a hundred times: it will forever keep its freshness as a
metal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once
unfolded by surprise as it went.”
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Robert Frost
From Wikipedia |
Toby Speed writes mysteries, children’s books, short fiction and poetry. DEATH OVER EASY (Five Star), the first book in her mystery series featuring aviator sleuth Emma Trace, came out in October. Her short story, “At the Corner of Night and Nowhere,” is included in the recent anthology, MOON SHOT: MURDER AND MAYHEM ON THE EDGE OF SPACE (Untreed Reads). Toby is the author of seven children's books, including TWO COOL COWS, an American Bookseller Pick of the List and an IRA-CBC Children's Choice Book, and BRAVE POTATOES, which was on both the Publishers Weekly and The New York Times children's bestseller lists. Her most recent poems appear inThe 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly, Light, and Silver Birch Press. Visit tobyspeed.com to learn more.
A note from Laura (AKA AuthorAmok)
I can't bring this series to a true close because -- as I said in my invitation to the guest bloggers -- source poems are like a well we draw from. I believe that these poems come from a well that never runs dry. Their healing water is always available to us.
I am grateful to each of the guest bloggers for their honesty and openness in this series. We have covered:
- poems of childhood (Laura, J.C., Pamela, Dennis);
- poems that stretch us as poets and readers (Dylan, Diane, Jone, Mary, Renee, Tim);
- poems of comfort (Mary, Jacqueline, Janet);
- poems that help us find our voice (Linda, Pat, Shirley);
- poems that lead us down the right path (Ann, Margaret, Toby).
Links to the entire series are below. Thank you, readers, for joining me and the guest bloggers for these enlightening posts about poetry.
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Here -- enjoy some cherry blossoms
from my back yard, with my thanks! |
Previous posts in this series:
