How do you parse Robert Frost's poem "A Dream Pang" ?

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Published in 1915 as part of the volume A Boy's Will. The poem is # 16 of 20 in the first sequence. In the table of contents it is listed like this:

16. A Dream Pang
He is shown by a dream how really well it is with him.

and then presented like this:

I HAD withdrawn in forest, and my song
Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway;
And to the forest edge you came one day
(This was my dream) and looked and pondered long,
But did not enter, though the wish was strong: 5
You shook your pensive head as who should say,
‘I dare not—too far in his footsteps stray—
He must seek me would he undo the wrong.

Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all
Behind low boughs the trees let down outside; 10
And the sweet pang it cost me not to call
And tell you that I saw does still abide.
But ’tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof,
For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.

― remy bean, Tuesday, 1 May 2007 17:57 (seventeen years ago) link

A Boy's Will is the first and last book in which Frost uses these swoony Romantic rhyme sceme, meter, and subject matter; the rest of his work makes this poem look rather fusty.

But anyway...this reminds me of a couple of Dante Gabriel Rossetti poems, by way of Keats' "The Fall of Hyperion" – the speaker meets his dream self, has a chance to peek into a life he might have chosen, but refrains from doing so at the last moment. Sort of a dry run for "The Road Not Taken."

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, 1 May 2007 18:01 (seventeen years ago) link

it's clearly about morning wood

― Edward III, Tuesday, 1 May 2007 18:11 (seventeen years ago) link

I'll meet you halfway on fusty – I'll go so far as archaic, but I think there's a nicely-calculated nebulousness that seems to've disappeared in the concretism of Frost's later work.

― remy bean, Tuesday, 1 May 2007 18:13 (seventeen years ago) link

I've always understood the poem as a kind of an ode from a love-nervous young man to his lover. He's just woken up from a dream and he's telling (the lover) about it. In the dream the young man has been, for some reason, struck mute in a forest while the lover calls to him. On waking he's relieved to find he's not alone, not mute, and that the wood is a fiction.

― remy bean, Tuesday, 1 May 2007 18:48 (seventeen years ago) link

That works too.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, 1 May 2007 20:09 (seventeen years ago) link

Well, it's a sonnet, to begin with - Frost's no fool, and it's early in the 20th century yet, so there are some formal expectations (the first half will pose a question, and the second will respond, etc). I think it's clear that the 2nd party is either imaginary or a manifestation of the narrator's inner self. The big questions are 1) what's "the wrong" referred to, or is it just some generic wrong? if so, that's odd, unless it's some garden-variety romantic thing. 2), the opening song-that-gets-swallowed-up-in-leaves (which argues strongly for the poem being about the poet's voice): isn't that a pretty loaded conceit with which to begin, and then go elsewhere?

Younger Frost is more stricken with older models than he'll be in just a few years, so I think he's aiming for some broader symbol, which is probably parse-able. But it's not really in his character, so it's opaque.

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 2 May 2007 01:10 (seventeen years ago) link

also the meter's straight pentameter and he'll use it 'til the last day of his life, he just gets better at it is all

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 2 May 2007 01:11 (seventeen years ago) link

also think there's a reader-meets-author reading that might bear fruit

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 2 May 2007 01:15 (seventeen years ago) link

2), the opening song-that-gets-swallowed-up-in-leaves (which argues strongly for the poem being about the poet's voice): isn't that a pretty loaded conceit with which to begin, and then go elsewhere?

He goes elsewhere? He has a dream in which he is shy and voiceless and does not dare talk to his potential lover; but in reality, he did dare talk to the lover and thus everything is honky-dorey. Hence "He is shown by a dream how really well it is with him."

So it's about that moment where you are overwhelmed (by a forest, by a "wrong") and almost don't speak. But you do, and it works out OK. So it's a celebration of "yay I have a voice" -- or, if you want to torque it a little (in a way I'm not sure is there), it could be a method of working yourself up to speaking.

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 01:25 (seventeen years ago) link

Also ABBAABBA CDCDEE. Mostly uninteresting rhymes except for "aloof"/"proof".

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 01:27 (seventeen years ago) link

Also it makes a nice feint at pretending to be another type of poem at first, with "And to the forest edge you came one day / (This was my dream)", as if the dream was going to be all about how wonderful it would have been if you had come but alas you did not. Whereas in fact you did come and the end result was awesomer than what the poem is setting up.

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 01:29 (seventeen years ago) link

Also there seems to be a quotation mark missing.

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 01:49 (seventeen years ago) link

The ending couplet is pretty snazzy, isn't it? I guess I'm coming out as a casual fan of this poem – there's something sorta Wallace Stevens about it. The intent of the lines ' I dare not—too far in his footsteps stray— / He must seek me would he undo the wrong' is a little elusive to me, though: is the narrator, in his dream, imagining what the _other_ character is thinking? Or is there some other gloss that I don't get?

― remy bean, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 02:01 (seventeen years ago) link

You shook your pensive head as who should say,
‘I dare not—too far in his footsteps stray—
He must seek me would he undo the wrong.

For "as who should say" read "as if to say" or "as one who would say", I believe. It is the lover saying, "No, he has to [apologize?] to me".

There might be more to it than that, but that's all I think you can unpack from it, as far as specifics go.

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 02:07 (seventeen years ago) link

Although: Weird Dickinsonian use of em dashes there!

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 02:08 (seventeen years ago) link

Hi J0hn! :)

Thats a pretty lovely poem I must say, I like it, I have read very little Frost.

― Trayce, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 02:11 (seventeen years ago) link

You shook your pensive head as who should say,
‘I dare not—too far in his footsteps stray—
He must seek me would he undo the wrong.

My own sense of that part is that perhaps the dreamforest is the speaker's guilt that he's wronged a lover, or is withdrawn somehow, and he needs to come out of the woods to make things right. That's just the immediate sense I get without thinking too much about it.

― Trayce, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 02:13 (seventeen years ago) link

For the last ten minutes I've been thinking that Frost used "5" and "10" in some really jarring, avant-garde way.

LOL I ARE DUMB

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 02:13 (seventeen years ago) link

I don't really dig some of the awkward grammar fudges, though. ("in forest" instead of "into the forest", "as who should say" instead of "as one who [would] say", "does still abide" instead of "still abides", "’tis" instead of "hi I am writing poetry lookee me!")

"And the sweet pang it cost me not to call" is particularly odd -- it cost a pang? Well, I guess. Or is it a play on "caused"? It predates payphones, of course...

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 02:14 (seventeen years ago) link

I think Casuistry is right though - this is a post-lovers' quarrel dream, and in the dream his lover refuses to come to him to apologize, and yet he can't bring himself to go to her. But then he awakes and finds her there (in bed I assume?)

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 02:18 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah, that makes the most sense to me -- he has this dream, suffers a "dream pang" which lingers after he wakes up, then presumably goes to her as he was unable to do in his dream. but then I am not a very sophisticated poetry-analyzin' dude, and my first impression was basically "ooh that last line is pretty".

― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 02:22 (seventeen years ago) link

He wakes. She lies (sleeping?) beside him, presumably as aggrieved as she was in his dream, but not sidelong and fleeting, as she was in his dream.

― M.V., Wednesday, 2 May 2007 02:29 (seventeen years ago) link

I think not sleeping, because he is telling her the dream in order to apologize

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 02:31 (seventeen years ago) link

Or maybe the morning wood thing is right, and she's just shown up for a drink

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 02:32 (seventeen years ago) link

There's no real evidence for it, but the vibe I'm getting is more "young man wooing fair maiden [whom he has not yet bedded]".

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 02:41 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm picturing the female lover getting all ticked off and saying "Jesus Robert, even when you apologize you have to turn it into some kind of self-congratulatory verse!"

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 02:45 (seventeen years ago) link

... as he, nonetheless, lights a post-coital cigarette.

― remy bean, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 02:46 (seventeen years ago) link

Does anyone have a take on why he writes "the wood wakes" in the final couplet?

― max, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:08 (seventeen years ago) link

I think it just means the dream ends, but there might be some play on words that I don't get

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:11 (seventeen years ago) link

my first thought was something like wakes = stirs = he is not silent, he says something and breaks the tranquility of the wood; but then I remembered it was a dream and went with the literal meaning that Hurting already mentioned

― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:14 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm just interested in why it's "the wood" who wakes up instead of the poem's speaker.

― max, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:16 (seventeen years ago) link

I thought maybe it had something to do with the way one comes out of a dream - it's not an active thing, but rather the dream usually dissolves or changes around you as you wake up.

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:17 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah, or "wakes" somehow meaning "lightens"? Or since "wood" seems to equal the "wrong", then perhaps the "wood" then equals "me" and it was all in his mind?

Also perhaps it's morning wood after all.

xpost

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:18 (seventeen years ago) link

I get the feeling there's something weird going on in the first couplet and the last couplet in terms of the speaker's relationship to the "wood," but I can't really figure it out.

xpost--yeah Casuistry, I like both of those readings.

― max, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:20 (seventeen years ago) link

OH WAIT A SECOND HE TOTALLY IS THE WOOD I JUST GOT IT

― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:20 (seventeen years ago) link

(this also explains how he is able to watch the other person stand at the edge of the wood and stare into it without them noticing, which really bugged me when I first read it -- he is "not far, but near"!!!)

― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:21 (seventeen years ago) link

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:24 (seventeen years ago) link

Oh yeah, I think you're right snowy. Good reading.

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:24 (seventeen years ago) link

So maybe that's why he says "withdrawn in forest" and not "withdrawn into the forest"; it's not weird diction but a move to not separate the speaker from the woods?

― max, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:25 (seventeen years ago) link

The narrative action of the poem:

1) the speaker relates a dream
2) the speaker sees the central character of his dream upon awakening

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:27 (seventeen years ago) link

I don't think the narrator is a tree or anything - rather than the narrator is relating the multi-faceted sensation of being watched, knowing one is being watched, and wanting to preserve that moment by not interfering with the watcher - this is all fairly par-for-the-course early-modernist stuff, which Frost is both interested by & somewhat above (cf. the resolve)

my read anyway

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:29 (seventeen years ago) link

xxpost: yeah, that was one of the other lines that I'm basing this assertion on (although I think "withdrawn in forest" works either way -- it's a freakin' sonnet for chrissakes, of course the diction might be a bit unusual!). and then of course "swallowed up in leaves that blew away" because he is powerless to do anything else but sit there and wait for his lover (assuming we still go with that reading) to come seek him out and make things right; but then he wakes up, into a world where he can do something about it, and sees "how really well it is with him".

― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:29 (seventeen years ago) link

j0hn I will readily admit to not knowing a fucking thing about modernists, poems, dreams, or love. being watched, sometimes, but only occasionally and usually in a vague unpleasant paranoid sense.

― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:32 (seventeen years ago) link

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:38 (seventeen years ago) link

y-yeah! what he said!

― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:41 (seventeen years ago) link

I mean nothing you're saying is wrong, John, but it just sounds like you're deliberately avoiding reading the poem closely enough. Ok, he wakes up to find a character from his dream. But who is that character? In what situation would one wake up to find a character from one's dream next to them, a character to whom one wanted to apologize but couldn't?

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:43 (seventeen years ago) link

no Casuistry, it's the conceit that goes elsewhere - the song to which the speaker refers appears from nowhere, is promptly "swallowed up by leaves" and not heard from again - odd for the song (which can be fairly equated with the speech-act of poetry) to vanish in the opening couplet, or be said to have vanished when evidence to the contrary is directly before us & is, in fact, rather the point

Well uh yes? I mean, the song is the poem is the thing which in the dream he cannot say but which in wakefulness he does in fact say, has in fact said. It seems tied in with the central conceit of the poem!

I feel like we're agreeing but from different POVs.

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:53 (seventeen years ago) link

Also I wouldn't get too hung on up "poet is woods" type stuff. Just note that there's a lot of fuzzy/futzy stuff going on -- grammar is set off-kilter (even for a sonnet's syntax!) and referents are as well. "Like in a dream", well, maybe; to create a disorienting effect, sure.

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:55 (seventeen years ago) link

Or in other other words, moments that are "out of joint" like that in poetry are meant to be savored, not resolved.

Although sometimes they are more awkward than tasty.

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 03:57 (seventeen years ago) link

Skipping 41 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

xpost: well at least SJax got ejected, making it offiically a Moral Victory.

― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:45 (seventeen years ago) link

~~Girl~~Cow thinks nothing of boundaries, realizes there is sweet fruit elsewhere and ignores shriveled up old ~~poet~~grass for sweeter fruit, pays price and shrivels herself.

xpost

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:46 (seventeen years ago) link

my Frost professor thought this a light thing but yeah there's something so suddenly dark about that last line, like a big warning

but again from an older dude's standpoint it seems like a rather well-founded tone for the warning I'm reading ("overindulge at your peril")

Casu can you make the case for cow=Woman?

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:47 (seventeen years ago) link

one line that jumped out at me was "think no more of wall-builders than fools". fools because the wall is easily jumped, or because the entire idea of walls is inherently foolish, or simply because the cow is mildly bothered that the wall is in her way?

(btw this was what led me to my awful reading of it)

― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:48 (seventeen years ago) link

J0hn: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cow

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:48 (seventeen years ago) link

something there is that doesn't love a wall

see what I did there

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:48 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah, that's what I was thinking (cow=woman), but I don't have direct evidence for it except that it's got that thing where Frost attributes human characteristics to animals or nature in order to express something about the speaker's mindset.

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:49 (seventeen years ago) link

You know, like a cow isn't normally "scorn"ful, but a woman can be.

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:49 (seventeen years ago) link

okay Casu managed to take what I was thinking and make it sound reasonable. but I still interpreted the udder shriveling in more of an obvious, cow-is-now-an-unfit-mother way.

― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:49 (seventeen years ago) link

2. A term for a nasty, stupid, and/or promiscuous person (usually female), despite that cows are cute and relatively intelligent animals.

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:49 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm not arguing that J0hn's more literal reading isn't also there.

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:50 (seventeen years ago) link

Also yes, I was weirded out by the Mending Wall ref too.

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:50 (seventeen years ago) link

something there is that doesn't love a wall

see what I did there

-- J0hn D., Tuesday, May 1, 2007 11:48 PM (56 seconds ago)

no actually, not at all. I assume it's an allusion of some sort?

― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:50 (seventeen years ago) link

Cows also don't think about wall builders.

Also "tasted fruit" -- hard not to think of Eve

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:51 (seventeen years ago) link

Bernard: http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/frost-mending.html

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:52 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah that's a good point in re: Eve

bernard, "mending wall" is one of Frost's best-known poems and begins with the line I quoted

xpost what Casu said

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:53 (seventeen years ago) link

Especially apples duh - now it suddenly seems obvious. Leaving a pasture to taste the fruit, etc.

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:53 (seventeen years ago) link

The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,

I think it's clear now that the cow is responsible for them & must be punished

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:54 (seventeen years ago) link

xpost but wait a second -- the pasture is "withering to the root"! what else is she supposed to do?

― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:55 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah but the fruit in Eden is right there at the center of the garden and is growing on the tree - this fruit has fallen & is pockmarked, not delicious & "good to eat" - I don't know if I'm going all the way to the cow=Eve conclusion, I think the cow's overindulgence is more general

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:56 (seventeen years ago) link

and I mean, check "Mending Wall" - Frost grows apple trees himself ("he is all pine and I am apple orchard") - I don't think we have Frost as God or Adam there, just a guy with apple trees on his property

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:57 (seventeen years ago) link

but I still interpreted the udder shriveling in more of an obvious, cow-is-now-an-unfit-mother way.

Cow is now useless as a cow! She can no longer perform her primary function on the farm!

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:57 (seventeen years ago) link

Well yeah, I don't want to take the Eve thing too far as a direct metaphor, I just think it has some undertones of that.

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 04:59 (seventeen years ago) link

xpost: right but the cow presumably doesn't care about that, whereas being unable to provide for her children would cause her to suddenly realize THE ERROR OF HER WAYS!

― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 05:00 (seventeen years ago) link

the cow isn't really sapient like that though - there's an element of wildness in the fence-jumping, and the scorning of the pasture for the apples

I really ought to go to bed

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 2 May 2007 05:00 (seventeen years ago) link

im bored now someone do another one

― deeznuts, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 05:00 (seventeen years ago) link

It reads to me like a pretty direct counsel to sobreity. Was his wife a drunken arse?

― Trayce, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 05:00 (seventeen years ago) link

A google search found me a commenter on another board who claims that cows get sick from eating apples due to the sugar (unconfirmed, obv.)

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 05:02 (seventeen years ago) link

dont go to bed watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMWtrzfwfpc

― deeznuts, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 05:02 (seventeen years ago) link

no I think I'll just post a James Krusoe poem, then turn in

Krusoe is no Frost, but is underrated

[b]I Don't Tell The Story of My Life Very Often, But Every Time I Do It Turns Out Crappy[/i]

There's something unrecognizable in my coffee cup,
And across the breakfast table my wife is wishing
I were David Niven. I don't blame her.
I spent last night dreaming of Rima,
The bird-girl, in Green Mansions.
Outside, I miss the bus; am hit up by a bum
Who wants a buck to help the earthquake victims
Down in South America. I say,
"That happened at least two years ago." He says,
"Well, they're still digging up the bodies."
I stick out a thumb to catch a ride -
The driver wants to know the names of body shops.
He drops me three miles short.
"Hello. My name is Robert.
Have you heard of Christ's good news?"
So I'm loping down the street with Robert
Waving good news after me and shouting
He's not winded because he doesn't drink or smoke;
I've almost got away - when just then the curb
Jumps up to grab my foot - and who's there?
It's my old professor, Dr., X., who wants to know -
"Hello, Krusoe. Still getting along as usual?"

― J0hn D., Wednesday, 2 May 2007 05:08 (seventeen years ago) link

James Krusoe = Jim Krusoe? I read his short story collection Blood Lake and it was very good; haven't seen any of his poetry before though

― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 05:11 (seventeen years ago) link

dont go to bed watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMWtrzfwfpc

-- deeznuts, Wednesday, May 2, 2007 12:02 AM (10 minutes ago)

(I did watch this, btw. it was very loud and occasionally made me laugh)

― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 05:13 (seventeen years ago) link

the narrator is a total cock & deserves whatever he gets

― deeznuts, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 05:15 (seventeen years ago) link

So whose woods are they anyway, and what promises does he have to keep?

― Hurting 2, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 05:20 (seventeen years ago) link

I have nothing to say about that poem.

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 05:35 (seventeen years ago) link

mr_yuck.gif

(also i was watching 'cars' in the other room while this thread got interesting)

― remy bean, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 06:03 (seventeen years ago) link

tomorrow let's do some stevens, 'cuz he's my homey.

― remy bean, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 06:03 (seventeen years ago) link

This thread reminds of the Prufrock thread on ILBooks.

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 06:08 (seventeen years ago) link

i associate prufrock with the Worst English Teacher in the World. and his Mustache.

― remy bean, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 06:13 (seventeen years ago) link

I always found Stevens kind of impenetrable but not in a bad way. Mysterious. A bit like Lynch?

― Trayce, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 06:41 (seventeen years ago) link

i love stevens

― rrrobyn, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 07:00 (seventeen years ago) link

I thought the cow in that second Frost poem thought no more of walls than open gates because she was totally hammered on fermented apples. All stumbling around, crashing into things, laughing at wall-builders, bellowing. (Also, cows can definitely express bemused scorn for people. I've seen it. No docile fools, they!)

― Fa Fa fa FA, Fa fa Fa fa FA Fa, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 07:25 (seventeen years ago) link

My parents tell a story of going to buy some cow manure to spread on their garden when they lived in Vermont. The farmer pretty much just gave them some shovels and sent them out into the field with his bovine beauties, who were so delighted at these poor fools shoveling their shit that they spent the whole time charging my parents as fast as they could, then stopping short just in front of them and leering with a look of utter hilarity and disdain.

― Fa Fa fa FA, Fa fa Fa fa FA Fa, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 07:30 (seventeen years ago) link

Not so much on poetry, but, you know, thought I'd add to the cow side of the discussion.

― Fa Fa fa FA, Fa fa Fa fa FA Fa, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 07:30 (seventeen years ago) link

I always found Stevens kind of impenetrable but not in a bad way. Mysterious. A bit like Lynch?

My favorite American poet. His pleasures deepen as one ages, I've discovered. Suddenly "The Plain Sense of Things" seems at once the most beautiful and devastating poem in the world.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 12:36 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm a big fan of Roethke myself. I like growth/plant/dirt metaphors.

― Trayce, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 12:37 (seventeen years ago) link

another late-night mavs/warriors game, another chance to discuss poetry while totally exhausted and barely coherent. WHO'S UP FOR IT???

― bernard snowy, Friday, 4 May 2007 02:58 (seventeen years ago) link

okay apparently no one. that's cool I will just stare at this ESPN gamecast for the next couple hours.

wtf jerry stackhouse has 11 points already in the 1st quarter!

― bernard snowy, Friday, 4 May 2007 03:12 (seventeen years ago) link

this thread is awesome! i never thought ilx could surprise me in 2007.

― J.D., Friday, 4 May 2007 07:40 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah, I must say this is the most I've enjoyed a thread in a long time. Perhaps the only thread I've enjoyed in a long time.

― Hurting 2, Friday, 4 May 2007 07:41 (seventeen years ago) link

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