WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.150 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.150 --> 00:00:06.370 align:middle line:84% Then the last poem I'm going to read 00:00:06.370 --> 00:00:13.120 align:middle line:84% is a poem just called "On the Porch at the Frost Place, 00:00:13.120 --> 00:00:15.790 align:middle line:90% Franconia, New Hampshire." 00:00:15.790 --> 00:00:20.680 align:middle line:84% Frost became a kind of National Park by his last years. 00:00:20.680 --> 00:00:27.460 align:middle line:84% As you know, developed an incredibly elaborate public 00:00:27.460 --> 00:00:34.630 align:middle line:84% persona, a kind of good-hearted all jolly white haired cracker 00:00:34.630 --> 00:00:35.530 align:middle line:90% barrel. 00:00:35.530 --> 00:00:39.580 align:middle line:84% And this persona had something to do with Frost 00:00:39.580 --> 00:00:41.770 align:middle line:90% because he invented it. 00:00:41.770 --> 00:00:47.110 align:middle line:84% It hid him from a public he feared 00:00:47.110 --> 00:00:50.290 align:middle line:84% and whose love and approval he wanted. 00:00:50.290 --> 00:00:53.200 align:middle line:84% But it didn't represent exactly the Frost 00:00:53.200 --> 00:00:58.240 align:middle line:84% who wrote poems like "Desert Places" and so forth. 00:00:58.240 --> 00:01:02.560 align:middle line:84% And the construction of this literary personality 00:01:02.560 --> 00:01:04.450 align:middle line:84% was one of the major imaginative enterprises 00:01:04.450 --> 00:01:06.220 align:middle line:90% of Frost's late years. 00:01:06.220 --> 00:01:11.770 align:middle line:84% And so it's an extremely elaborate and complicated one 00:01:11.770 --> 00:01:16.720 align:middle line:84% and one runs across it in New England 00:01:16.720 --> 00:01:19.360 align:middle line:90% at almost every literary turn. 00:01:19.360 --> 00:01:23.770 align:middle line:84% It turns out, for example, that there are three Frost Places. 00:01:23.770 --> 00:01:28.570 align:middle line:84% I've now been a visitor by one circumstance or another 00:01:28.570 --> 00:01:29.650 align:middle line:90% at all of them. 00:01:29.650 --> 00:01:32.960 align:middle line:84% Each of them has his favorite Morris chair, 00:01:32.960 --> 00:01:37.330 align:middle line:84% which I imagine conveyed by truck from one to the other 00:01:37.330 --> 00:01:39.205 align:middle line:84% so that it's always there when I arrive. 00:01:39.205 --> 00:01:42.100 align:middle line:90% 00:01:42.100 --> 00:01:44.920 align:middle line:84% Two of them have poetry trails which 00:01:44.920 --> 00:01:47.260 align:middle line:84% are places where you can walk in the woods. 00:01:47.260 --> 00:01:48.904 align:middle line:90% And-- 00:01:48.904 --> 00:01:51.150 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:51.150 --> 00:01:52.900 align:middle line:84% --there'll be a plaque with the poem on it 00:01:52.900 --> 00:01:54.520 align:middle line:84% at the appropriate place, there'll 00:01:54.520 --> 00:01:59.320 align:middle line:90% be a birch tree or a wood pile. 00:01:59.320 --> 00:02:03.280 align:middle line:90% 00:02:03.280 --> 00:02:06.220 align:middle line:84% The Frost place in Franconia, New Hampshire, 00:02:06.220 --> 00:02:08.500 align:middle line:84% actually has a place in the woods. 00:02:08.500 --> 00:02:10.360 align:middle line:84% As you come around a corner, you see 00:02:10.360 --> 00:02:15.400 align:middle line:84% a kind of avenue between the trees extending off not-- 00:02:15.400 --> 00:02:18.100 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:02:18.100 --> 00:02:19.000 align:middle line:90% 00:02:19.000 --> 00:02:21.520 align:middle line:84% And you think to yourself, oh, my god! 00:02:21.520 --> 00:02:22.720 align:middle line:90% Here's the road not taken. 00:02:22.720 --> 00:02:31.650 align:middle line:90% 00:02:31.650 --> 00:02:37.500 align:middle line:84% Underneath all this nonsense that Frost helped so much 00:02:37.500 --> 00:02:44.010 align:middle line:84% to participate in are some of the great poems written 00:02:44.010 --> 00:02:46.110 align:middle line:90% in American poetry. 00:02:46.110 --> 00:02:50.940 align:middle line:84% And Frost seems almost to have invented 00:02:50.940 --> 00:02:56.910 align:middle line:84% certain ideas of New England so thoroughly that one summer-- 00:02:56.910 --> 00:02:59.520 align:middle line:84% the Frost place at Franconia, New Hampshire, 00:02:59.520 --> 00:03:01.223 align:middle line:90% is different than the others. 00:03:01.223 --> 00:03:02.640 align:middle line:84% And it's not just a little museum, 00:03:02.640 --> 00:03:05.095 align:middle line:84% but they actually invite a poet to come live 00:03:05.095 --> 00:03:07.470 align:middle line:84% in it for two months in the summer and write poems there. 00:03:07.470 --> 00:03:09.810 align:middle line:90% One summer, I was that person. 00:03:09.810 --> 00:03:14.250 align:middle line:84% And occasionally, someone would come there on a pilgrimage 00:03:14.250 --> 00:03:18.275 align:middle line:84% and would look around, and they say, was Frost born here? 00:03:18.275 --> 00:03:20.025 align:middle line:84% Of course, Frost was born in San Francisco 00:03:20.025 --> 00:03:22.620 align:middle line:84% and lived the first 10 years of his life on the West Coast. 00:03:22.620 --> 00:03:23.963 align:middle line:90% But we don't even remember that. 00:03:23.963 --> 00:03:25.380 align:middle line:84% The question, was Frost born here, 00:03:25.380 --> 00:03:27.393 align:middle line:84% makes perfect sense since Frost seems 00:03:27.393 --> 00:03:29.310 align:middle line:84% to have invented all of New England naturally. 00:03:29.310 --> 00:03:31.690 align:middle line:84% He seems to have belonged there forever. 00:03:31.690 --> 00:03:34.350 align:middle line:84% There were also questions like, was that Frost's cat and so 00:03:34.350 --> 00:03:35.665 align:middle line:90% forth which-- 00:03:35.665 --> 00:03:38.575 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:03:38.575 --> 00:03:42.600 align:middle line:90% 00:03:42.600 --> 00:03:49.230 align:middle line:84% But the Frost place in Franconia is where 00:03:49.230 --> 00:03:52.380 align:middle line:90% Frost moved in his 40th year. 00:03:52.380 --> 00:03:53.880 align:middle line:84% He tells in the poem "New Hampshire" 00:03:53.880 --> 00:03:57.840 align:middle line:84% the circumstances of his coming to live in the house. 00:03:57.840 --> 00:03:59.377 align:middle line:90% He admired it. 00:03:59.377 --> 00:04:01.210 align:middle line:84% He went up to the guy who owned it and said, 00:04:01.210 --> 00:04:02.710 align:middle line:84% I'm going to buy this house from you 00:04:02.710 --> 00:04:04.830 align:middle line:84% and put you in the house down the road. 00:04:04.830 --> 00:04:07.260 align:middle line:84% And the guy said, you know, the hell you are. 00:04:07.260 --> 00:04:09.510 align:middle line:90% And Frost did it, of course. 00:04:09.510 --> 00:04:12.330 align:middle line:84% And five years later, when he moved away, 00:04:12.330 --> 00:04:14.700 align:middle line:84% he restored the guy to the house. 00:04:14.700 --> 00:04:18.540 align:middle line:84% The house stayed in that family for all the intervening years 00:04:18.540 --> 00:04:20.350 align:middle line:90% and was substantially unchanged. 00:04:20.350 --> 00:04:23.490 align:middle line:84% It was lived in by a family who despised 00:04:23.490 --> 00:04:25.290 align:middle line:90% most of 20th century life. 00:04:25.290 --> 00:04:27.900 align:middle line:84% And so added almost nothing to the house. 00:04:27.900 --> 00:04:29.760 align:middle line:84% And the house is almost exactly what 00:04:29.760 --> 00:04:34.650 align:middle line:84% a farmhouse in that remote and comfortless part of New 00:04:34.650 --> 00:04:38.580 align:middle line:84% Hampshire would have been like in 1920. 00:04:38.580 --> 00:04:40.410 align:middle line:84% Frost was there as a young man at 40. 00:04:40.410 --> 00:04:41.670 align:middle line:90% Ezra Pound knew he was good. 00:04:41.670 --> 00:04:43.710 align:middle line:84% A couple of poets in England and a couple of friends 00:04:43.710 --> 00:04:44.620 align:middle line:90% thought he was interesting. 00:04:44.620 --> 00:04:46.110 align:middle line:84% But basically, he was a 40-year-old 00:04:46.110 --> 00:04:49.350 align:middle line:84% who insisted on writing poems, had no public recognition, one 00:04:49.350 --> 00:04:50.430 align:middle line:90% small book published. 00:04:50.430 --> 00:04:53.940 align:middle line:84% And he dragged a large, poor, and uncomfortable family 00:04:53.940 --> 00:04:56.460 align:middle line:84% out there with him and asked them 00:04:56.460 --> 00:04:59.580 align:middle line:84% to live in that kind of isolation and severity 00:04:59.580 --> 00:05:01.745 align:middle line:84% while he persisted in writing many 00:05:01.745 --> 00:05:03.370 align:middle line:84% of the poems for which he's now famous. 00:05:03.370 --> 00:05:05.350 align:middle line:84% That was a five year period of his life 00:05:05.350 --> 00:05:07.950 align:middle line:84% was the most productive in which he wrote 00:05:07.950 --> 00:05:09.300 align:middle line:90% the most of his great poems. 00:05:09.300 --> 00:05:12.540 align:middle line:84% And so the house has a special fascination. 00:05:12.540 --> 00:05:14.550 align:middle line:84% The famous-- the famous miserable family 00:05:14.550 --> 00:05:20.130 align:middle line:84% life of the Frost family as well is palpable in the house. 00:05:20.130 --> 00:05:22.860 align:middle line:84% I had visitors in the house who couldn't sleep upstairs. 00:05:22.860 --> 00:05:25.380 align:middle line:84% I mean, people who would scoff at the notion of ghosts 00:05:25.380 --> 00:05:28.020 align:middle line:84% and spirits but have said, I don't know what it is, 00:05:28.020 --> 00:05:31.560 align:middle line:90% but I ain't sleeping up there. 00:05:31.560 --> 00:05:37.020 align:middle line:84% And it's a place of, therefore, of great interest and power 00:05:37.020 --> 00:05:39.450 align:middle line:84% to, I think, anybody interested in writing, particularly 00:05:39.450 --> 00:05:41.033 align:middle line:84% as somebody who loves to write and who 00:05:41.033 --> 00:05:42.750 align:middle line:90% spends a summer living in it. 00:05:42.750 --> 00:05:46.380 align:middle line:84% And it's impossible to do that without needing 00:05:46.380 --> 00:05:50.280 align:middle line:84% to come to some imaginative terms with it. 00:05:50.280 --> 00:05:52.480 align:middle line:90% That's what this poem is about. 00:05:52.480 --> 00:05:55.980 align:middle line:84% It's called "On the Porch at the Frost Place, Franconia, New 00:05:55.980 --> 00:05:58.570 align:middle line:90% Hampshire." 00:05:58.570 --> 00:06:03.840 align:middle line:84% "So here, the great man stood, fermenting malice and poems. 00:06:03.840 --> 00:06:07.350 align:middle line:84% We have to be nearly as fierce against ourselves as he. 00:06:07.350 --> 00:06:11.340 align:middle line:84% Not to misread by their disguises. 00:06:11.340 --> 00:06:14.550 align:middle line:84% Blue in dawn haze, the tamarack across the road 00:06:14.550 --> 00:06:18.660 align:middle line:84% is new since Frost and 30 feet tall already. 00:06:18.660 --> 00:06:22.170 align:middle line:84% No doubt, he liked to scorch off morning fog 00:06:22.170 --> 00:06:25.020 align:middle line:84% by simply staring through it long enough that what he saw 00:06:25.020 --> 00:06:27.000 align:middle line:90% grew visible. 00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:29.320 align:middle line:84% Watching the dragon come out of the notch, 00:06:29.320 --> 00:06:31.830 align:middle line:90% his children used to call it. 00:06:31.830 --> 00:06:35.880 align:middle line:84% And no wonder he chose a climate whose winter and house whose 00:06:35.880 --> 00:06:41.220 align:middle line:84% isolation could be stern enough to his wrath and pity 00:06:41.220 --> 00:06:45.060 align:middle line:84% as to make them seem survival skills he'd learned on the job, 00:06:45.060 --> 00:06:49.530 align:middle line:84% farming 50 acres of pasture and woods. 00:06:49.530 --> 00:06:55.590 align:middle line:84% For cash crops, he had sweat and doubt and a moralizing rage, 00:06:55.590 --> 00:06:58.560 align:middle line:84% those staples of the barter system. 00:06:58.560 --> 00:07:02.640 align:middle line:84% And these swift and aching summers 00:07:02.640 --> 00:07:04.740 align:middle line:84% like the blackberries I've been poaching down 00:07:04.740 --> 00:07:08.040 align:middle line:84% the road from the house where no one's home. 00:07:08.040 --> 00:07:13.350 align:middle line:84% Acid at first, and each little globe of the berry too taut 00:07:13.350 --> 00:07:15.360 align:middle line:90% and distinct from the others. 00:07:15.360 --> 00:07:19.050 align:middle line:84% Then they swell to hold the riot of their juices. 00:07:19.050 --> 00:07:23.460 align:middle line:84% And briefly, the fat berries are perfected food. 00:07:23.460 --> 00:07:26.730 align:middle line:84% And then they begin to leak and blob. 00:07:26.730 --> 00:07:28.990 align:middle line:84% And under their crescendo of sugar, 00:07:28.990 --> 00:07:32.260 align:middle line:84% I can taste how they make it through winter. 00:07:32.260 --> 00:07:36.280 align:middle line:84% By the time I'm back from a last six berry raid, 00:07:36.280 --> 00:07:39.790 align:middle line:84% it's almost dusk and more and more mosquitoes 00:07:39.790 --> 00:07:42.790 align:middle line:84% will race around my ear, their tiny engines 00:07:42.790 --> 00:07:46.060 align:middle line:84% the speed boats of the insect world. 00:07:46.060 --> 00:07:47.830 align:middle line:84% I won't be longer on the porch than it 00:07:47.830 --> 00:07:50.800 align:middle line:84% takes to look out once and see what I've taught myself 00:07:50.800 --> 00:07:53.650 align:middle line:90% in two months here to discern. 00:07:53.650 --> 00:07:57.310 align:middle line:90% Night restoring its opacities. 00:07:57.310 --> 00:08:00.640 align:middle line:84% Though for an instant, as intense 00:08:00.640 --> 00:08:03.760 align:middle line:84% and evanescent as waking from a dream of eating 00:08:03.760 --> 00:08:07.510 align:middle line:84% blackberries and almost being able to remember it, 00:08:07.510 --> 00:08:09.790 align:middle line:90% I think I see the parts-- 00:08:09.790 --> 00:08:14.470 align:middle line:84% haze, dusk, light broken into grains, 00:08:14.470 --> 00:08:18.370 align:middle line:84% fatigue, the mineral dark of the white mountains, 00:08:18.370 --> 00:08:22.210 align:middle line:84% the wavering shadows steadying themselves, 00:08:22.210 --> 00:08:27.160 align:middle line:84% separate then joined, then seamless. 00:08:27.160 --> 00:08:32.650 align:middle line:84% The way, in fact, Frost's great poems, like all great poems, 00:08:32.650 --> 00:08:37.960 align:middle line:84% conceal what they merely know and are predicaments. 00:08:37.960 --> 00:08:41.590 align:middle line:84% However long it took to watch what I thought I saw, 00:08:41.590 --> 00:08:46.780 align:middle line:84% it was dark when I was done everywhere and on the porch. 00:08:46.780 --> 00:08:50.530 align:middle line:84% And since nothing stopped my sight, I let it go." 00:08:50.530 --> 00:08:53.230 align:middle line:90% 00:08:53.230 --> 00:08:55.330 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:08:55.330 --> 00:08:59.230 align:middle line:90% 00:08:59.230 --> 00:09:01.080 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:09:01.080 --> 00:09:15.000 align:middle line:90%