Writing Samples: Non-Fiction

• Robert Frost's "Provide, Provide"
• H.D and Marianne Moore: A Comparison
• Housman's Eternal "Hell Gate"
• Eliot & Hughes
• Hearing Gertrude Stein
• The Youthful Yachts of William Carlos Williams
• The Wild Birds of Yeats

Although Robert Frost's poetry often appears simple and provincial, much of it is imbued with a subtle and sometimes ironic complexity. Part of Frost's skill lies in his ability to write, as it were, two poems simultaneously. Frost allows readers of varying analytical skill, or interest, to enjoy his poetry at the level of the readers' own choosing. Frost often seems direct and optimistic, but a closer reading may reveal a darker side to his work. "Provide, Provide" serves as the exception which proves the rule, exemplifying Frost's use of the opposite technique--the poem's cynical narrator serves to disguise the more optimistic message of individualism and self-reliance.

The poem begins with nearly as dark and pessimistic an image as one can imagine--a "witch", a "withered hag" who has fallen from her high position as a Hollywood starlet to a state which forces her to become a lowly cleaning woman (1-4). As if this were not pessimistic enough, the poet reminds us that this type of fall occurs so frequently as to remove all doubt as to its realism in this instance (5-6).

In the third stanza, the poet begins his instruction regarding how to avoid such a fate, even as the narrator provides a more cynical solution. The narrator delivers a message so negative as to tempt the reader to dismiss the poem as a simple comment on those who judge themselves too much through the eyes of others. To be told to "Die early" (7) or, at least, to "die in state" (9) suggests an impossible level of control over one's own destiny to which few people short of Byron's Manfred would aspire. Frost's narrator therefore invites the reader to disbelieve the sincerity of these sentiments.

The key to understanding Frost's true message, however, lies not in the words quoted above, but rather in the first part of line nine: "Make up your mind". Frost disguises these important words about self-reliance between the two phrases about death choices like Jesus couching his wisdom in parables for those with ears to hear. The following stanza deepens theimpression of impossibility which the poet creates-one might hope to own the stock exchange or become royalty (10-12) with about as much success as choosing the time and nature of one's own death.

Frost intends that the reader must make up his mind to live a self-examined life, a life of his own choosing. Frost therefore encourages the reader to rely not on external circumstances but on his own knowledge and integrity (13-15). The reader again has the opportunity to agree with the narrator that these are methods designed to reach the wealth and power described in the previous stanza, but Frost expects some readers to follow these suggestions for their intrinsic value. The fact that these techniques have "worked" for others (15), although no one yet has purchased the entire stock market, and practically no one has achieved a throne to which he was not born, demonstrates that Frost does not intend to suggest means to those ends.

Frost goes on to note that memories of fame and fortune fail to make up for latter poverty, or the difficulty associated with death (16-18). Here, he illustrates that the cleaning woman's problem lies not in what she is, but in what she was. She sought stardom to alleviate alienation and to ease her last days, but found fame fleeting, and unsuited to those purposes. Perhaps, Frost implies, if the cleaning woman had started out as a cleaning woman and was true in her attempt to excel in that field, the end would not have been so hard for her. Her memories, in fact, make her final status harder, not easier.

Finally, Frost instructs his readers to buy whatever friendship they can, for "boughten friendship" is better than "none at all" (19-21). Here, the narrator speaks of money but the poet speaks the literal truth, without indicating in this stanza the form of the currency to which he refers. The poet has no need to do so here, because he has already told the reader all he needs to know. Frost encourages the reader to bond with others through the simplicity of one's own knowledge and integrity (13-15). Thus, humility, responsibility and integrity are put forth as the means to the end of a community of self-examined individual lives.

For those who will not hear, someone will no doubt provide-but the form of that provision will be uncertain, and not of the individual's own choosing. For those who would hear, the poet states a simple truth: friendship and community must be earned, for they will not be given freely, and they cannot be purchased with fortune or fame.

Although contemporaries and women, the poets H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) and Marianne Moore had little else in common. They did share an interest in nature, and in describing nature vividly in poetry. Moore, however, in structure, tone, and level of descriptive detail, differed greatly from H. D. A comparison of H. D.'s "Sea Rose" with Moore's "The Fish" illustrates the few similarities and the numerous differences between the two poets.

The two poems describe natural scenes, both related to the ocean. In "Sea Rose", H. D. describes a "harsh rose" (1) which the sea has subjected to its damaging currents and swells. She also describes a rose which remains pristine, undamaged by exposure to the elements, given perhaps as a token of love and "hardened" (16), that is, pressed between the pages of a book for safe-keeping. Moore also seems to contrast, albeit less directly, "The Fish" inhabiting the tidal pool with the rock which forms the pool-one moved randomly about by the swirling rush of water, the other bearing the scars of standing firm against it.

Obviously, "The Fish" and "Sea Rose" differ considerably in length. Although Moore wrote shorter poetry and H. D. longer (some much longer), the level of detail described in these poems typifies the work of each poet. In general, Moore's poetry details a much larger picture, and does so more precisely. Here, in sixteen lines H. D. has contrasted two roses; Moore has described mussels, barnacles, and the play of the sunlight in the water in her first sixteen lines, and goes on to describe much more.

Another rather obvious difference between the two poems lies in their structure. H. D. wrote "Sea Rose" in the most free of free verse--with rhyme or meter, without even uniform lineor stanza length. In fact, the reader finds almost no poetic device in the entire poem other than perhaps the brief alliteration of "single on a stem" (7). Moore's "The Fish", on the other hand, follows a definite aabbc rhyme scheme in each of the eight metrically uniform stanzas (although Moore does take some poetic license in counting both "opening" (5) and"chasm" (35) as two syllable words). Moore also uses alliteration in several instances, for example "submerged shafts of the / sun / spilt like spun / glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness" (10-13).

Despite her use of these poetic devices, Moore's poetry reads much more like prose than does H. D.'s. Ten of the sixteen lines in "Sea Rose", for example, end in punctuation--a comma, dash, period or question mark emphasizing and elongation the normal brief pause at the end of each line. Moore also ends ten lines of "The Fish" with punctuation, but her poem has two-and-a-half times as many lines as H. D.'s. Sentences run over line endings in such a way as virtually to prevent the reader from pausing there. Indeed, Moore even hyphenates the word"ac- / cident" (31-32) to de-emphasize the importance of line endings in her poetry.

Finally, H. D.'s mood or voice sounds considerably more poetic than does Moore's, who sounds much more casual--practically conversational--when read aloud. H. D.'s indirect anthropomorphism of the "Sea Rose" through direct address (8) can hardly sound like anything but a poetic conceit. Moore, on the other hand, sounds almost like a naturalist's diary entry describing the breaking of waves over a tidal pool.

For all their differences, however, both of these image poets create amazingly vivid word pictures of their subject matter. In each case the reader can practically hear the ocean waves crashing against the shore. Although they certainly travel different paths, H. D. and more arrive, in many ways, at the same poetic destination.

Although A. E. Housman believed that poetry should emphasize the communication of emotion over ideas, his poetry often accomplished both ends. The intensity of the emotion shared with the reader virtually requires not only an emotional but also an intellectual response. Although he utilized symbolism and word play in his writing, his use of such devices only furthered the creation of the emotional picture which Housman saw and wished to share in words with his reader. Housman intentionally wrote accessible poetry, avoiding obscure classical allusions (which he was certainly capable of including) and other obstacles to immediate, empathic understanding. "Hell Gate" exemplifies Housman's communication of ideas primarily through mood.

In the first four sections of the poem, Housman denies the reader a definite setting or time. The road the narrator travels passes through a "sad uncoloured plain" (line 2). Although the narrative appears to occur at twilight (3), Housman also describes it as "dawn without a sun" (34). Indeed, the protective wall surrounding hell casts a shadow, but it is "not of night" (6). In fact, Housman uses at least eighteen expressions which invoke time or timelessness in the first 64 lines of "Hell Gate", including "eternal" (14), "everlasting" (32), "time" (42), and "still" (49). In addition to these, lines 24 though 32 describe the narrator in the present remembering deeds of the past.

Housman further decries the poem's setting as still and silent. At first, there are only two exceptions to this--the conductor and his war captive (see lines 9 and 72), who move along the road. These are the only two characters present, although the sentry at the gate is visible in the far distance (16). The narrator does not speak, but the conductor does, answering two questions which the narrator has left unasked. Nothing and no one else moves or sounds on the plain.

The pivotal action in the poem occurs in lines 65 through 86, in which Ned shoots Satan with the musket provided for the defense of hell. Housman changes the setting and mood dramatically. For the first time there are more than two characters present--not only have the travelers come to Ned, but Death and Sin have appeared personified to greet their returning lord. The inhabitants of hell break the silence, as well, and their excitement at the return of their "king" can be heard from the narrator's position outside the gate (68-70). Housman uses practically no time references in this section, which underscores the immediacy of Ned's response to his recognition of the narrator. The tension which the poet has developed in the first two thirds of the poem is suddenly and violently resolved, and the reader is left with the definite sense that the situation has dramatically and unalterably changed.

Nonetheless, nothing has really changed in the life of the narrator. Housman renews the sense of timelessness invoked in the first portion of the poem, using at least eight more time references in the last two sections. The city is "dusk and mute"--there is neither day nor night, and silence has returned to the plain (103). The narrator is once again on a journey, along the same road, with a single companion, only now he is taking the "backward way" (96), erasing whatever progress had been made along that road. Moreover, the narrator retains the designation of a war captive, now having been won from hell by Ned.

Although much has happened, little has changed as a result. The journey of captive and captor continues through the same plain. Housman has shown us that even the most violent of action in what would appear to be the most noble of causes has little lasting effect. As the poet wrote "Hell Gate" in the years immediately following World War I, his lesson may have been intended as a lesson on the futility of that war, but it also stands as an indictment of violent resolutions to conflict in general. As the poem ends, the reader finds himself with the narrator and sees that, even after all that has occurred, the road does indeed lead onward again (1). As the narrator told us at the poem's beginning, he has been here before. So, comes the realization, has the reader.

Although at first glance there would appear to be more differences than similarities between Hughes and Eliot, the two poets had much in common in background, style and theme. Certainly, one familiar with the education and beliefs of these two poets would look at their work expecting to find differences. Eliot, for example, seemed concerned with the concept of a deracinated man--Hughes was that man, a mix of white, black and Hispanic. Certainly, Eliot must have seemed to fit in better at Harvard than Hughes ever did at Columbia. Nonetheless, a careful reader can find more similarities than might first appear evident in the work of Langston Hughes and T. S. Eliot.

Certainly, although roughly contemporaries, they did not share identical backgrounds. Yet Eliot, from a transplanted New England WASP family, grew up in St. Louis, a few hundred miles' worth of Missouri away from Hughes's birthplace in Joplin. Each, then, received his own version of a Midwest American upbringing. Furthermore, neither seems to have been satisfied with the limits of this upbringing; both spent considerable time traveling and learning--formally or informally--either domestically or abroad.

Stylistically, each poet took the traditional songs of his own people--the ragtime dance music of middle-class whites or the more earthy jazz and blues of less affluent blacks--and found the poetical in it. Eliot found the dissolution and ignorance of main-stream society symbolized here, bleakly watered down into mindless popular music. Hughes, conversely, found freedom and inspiration in the blues, and sought through his own poetry to gain the same type of perspective on personal suffering offered through that music.

Each poet also mixed traditional rhythm and rhyme schemes with free verse to arrive at a middle ground between his inspiration and his contemporary theme. The iambic 'ghost meter' of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is not dissimilar in style from the on-again off-againtrochaic rhythm of "Madam's Past History" or the free musicality of "The Weary Blues." The varying rhythm of "Prufrock" and its rhyme scheme--which one may only describe as more than incidental but less than regular--might remind the reader of the rhymes which seemingly appear only when sought after in "Theme for English B."

Each poet, also, drew upon traditional forms of religion in his craft and in his personal life. Eliot's personal quest for meaning and spirituality appears in practically all of his work, and his eventual answers to most of his questioning came in the form of traditional Christianity. But where Eliot seems concerned that modern, polite Christianity had become more of a social convention than a true spirituality, Hughes seems to see the same problem in the less refined, more emotional revival which occurred near the turn of the century. Hughes's spirituality seems simultaneously more dramatic and less personally involved--while he clearly draws on the traditions of black American Christianity and the salvation experience, one often gets the feeling that he does so with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

Perhaps desperation links these poets together more than any other commonality, despite Hughes's attempt to avoid connections with his European poetic ancestry. Hughes's hopes for this world seem brighter; his faith in the next seems more questionable. Certainly, the ironic reversal of the exchange of sex and money for togetherness in "50-50" represents an improvement, if only a partial one, over the meaningless exchange of intimacy between the "young man carbuncular" (231) and the "typist home at teatime" (222) in "The Waste Land."

Eliot, inheriting the awful dissolution and predicted doom of Yeats's "Second Coming," manages to add hope through faith--faith in a better life in the next world as promised by Christ. Hughes adds to this hope by seeking, through the poetry of the blues, to transform something of this world into something of the next--where Eliot's juxtaposition of child's play with collapse in "London Bridge" enhances the sense of inconsolable despair, Hughes mixes the forlorn themes of the blues with its music to deal as positively as possible with what may have been an unchanging and unchangeable situation.

Simply put, Eliot does not seem to have believed in the possibility of heaven on earth. Hughes would probably have agreed--but he also would have insisted that we need not have a hell here, either.

Although Gertrude Stein appeared wholly new, her poetry actually descends from at least two earlier poetic traditions: epic poetry and incantatory shamanism. Stein wrote her poetry, like that of Homer and Chaucer (with whom she is known to have compared herself), to be read aloud. Furthermore, her poetry seeks not to describe, instruct, or inspire, but to create. Gertrude Stein denied contemporary poetic thinking in order to return poetry to its earliest forms and functions.

Most readers can hardly appreciate Stein's poetry on the page. Even to the experienced reader of poetry, approaching Stein's work hoping for Frost, expecting Whitman, and prepared for Eliot, Stein's claim never to have repeated appears as incomprehensible as her poetry itself. Her work contains what appears to be considerable repetition of words, phrases, and lines. Stein's explanation that each apparent iteration actually differed slightly in emphasis does not help, unless one reads the poem aloud.

In addition, Stein appears to have chosen words more for their sounds and cadence than for meaning or usage. For example, the first two lines of "Idem the Same" from "A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson", while unarguably lacking in grammar, succeed both in presenting an interesting cadence to the reader and in communicating some vague meaning. However, the precise type, depth, and subject of the thorough knowledge pictured here will vary widely because Stein leaves so much unsaid, engendering a creative work on the part of the reader.

Stein specifically intended such a creative partnership with her reader. She so distrusted memory that she attempted neither to communicate her own nor to elicit theirs from her readers. Rather, she sought to create new experiences and states of consciousness with the reader. Her intentionally dense structure and often partial or conflicting imagery demand the reader's full attention and effort. Furthermore, her deliberate misuse of words and sentence structure disallow most of the reader's previous experience in deciphering poetry.

Thus, Stein causes the reader to live entirely in the present, experiencing the moment without being hindered by preconceptions about poetry or word meaning or, in fact, anything. She has elicited from the reader not a memory, but a wholly new experience. Her poetry, read aloud, has become an incantation, summoning forth from each reader a unique state of consciousness, one which exists purely in the now. Her work achieves power to enchant the reader to see the reality of the world, rather than his own expectations or illusions.

What Stein's poetry lacks in superficial beauty, it more than makes up for in invocatory power. However, the reader must remember that for the power to be realized, he must actively join into the creative process. He must abandon his desire to find meaning in what Stein wrote, for Stein did not write meaningful poetry in the traditional sense. Stein provides the reader with the tools, the words, or the spell, if you will--but the meaning must come from the reader's own interaction with the conjured present moment.

Although William Carlos Williams believed that poetry should be primarily about its own immediate subject, much of his work takes on a symbolic or metaphorical importance beyond the original subject. Often, his limited topics and contexts represent the world as a whole or, at least, more of the world than that with which the poem ostensibly deals. Indeed, his vivid and often colorful imagery at times virtually requires the reader to place the poem in the greater context of the world at large.

Williams's "The Yachts", for example, allows for a variety of metaphorical contexts: the reader can see the yachts as poets, under the wind of inspiration, struggling across a sea ofopposition. The reader might instead view the yachts as individualists on a sea of conformity. Following either of those interpretations, Williams would seem to hold a rather cynical view of poetry or individualism, in that the yachts all travel in the same direction toward the same goal, but in competition. Williams, however, generally wrote on more universal themes, human experience which would be common to all. One universal interpretation of Williams' "The Yachts" sees the yacht race as suggestive of one of the most common human experiences--coming of age.

The yachts, like students of high school or college age, exist and compete in a sheltered microcosm which allows some "real life" experience but serves as a barrier "shielding them from the too heavy blows" of the world at large (2). The yachts experience much of the pleasures and dangers of the ocean, but not as the "biggest hulls" do (4), due to the danger of sinking (5). Although groomed (10) and "well guarded", the yachts nonetheless must experience the "open water" (13) with all eyes upon them. Their "sycophant" families remain near, unable to assist directly or even to match precisely the speed or course of the yachts (14, 15).

The sea here represents the adult world and its conflicting interests in the success of youth. Threatened, it laps the "glossy sides" of the yachts (19-20), unsuccessfully searching for a handhold by which it might hinder their free motion. Nature, however, realizing the inevitable necessity of the progress of youth, brings her wind to propel the yachts (21). The adults seek to impede their progress, or at least to regulate it, until the entire sea seems focused on that one goal (23-29), despite the knowledge that the adult world supports the youth (18, 30). The energy of youth and the sovereignty of nature combine to thwart adult intentions.

Significantly, the race does not end; no one wins. The yachts must either sink or move forward according to their own identities because yachts inherently sink or move forward. The cyclical nature of the race does not allow for winning or losing, but only for acting in accordance with one's own being. The yachts move forward here, in part because of the sheltered harbor in which they compete, but in time they will move into the open sea, to continue the race.

Although William Yeats utilizes a number of repeating symbols in his poetry, the precise meaning of these symbols often changes over time. Often, too, Yeats leaves the symbolic meaning of these images intentionally imprecise. For example, his use of birds as symbols differed from poem to poem, from rather fundamental to substantially more complex. In several of his poems, Yeats uses the image of one or more birds to represent something greater than merely the bird itself.

In some poems, Yeats uses birds in relatively straightforward ways. In "The Lake Isle ofInnisfree", for example, the sound "of the linnet's wings" (8) brings peace to the narrator, as does the sound of the pigeons "In the Seven Woods" (1, 12). The sparrows of "The Sorrow of Love" represent nature and the ways in which man's view of nature changes with the condition of his heart (1, 9). Yeats uses owls in "The Cap and Bells" as simple but elegant indicators of time of day (6, 14). The birds of the moor symbolize change for Yeats in "Easter 1916", juxtapositioned as they are with the unmoving heart-stone in "the living stream" (41-56). Yeats returns to linnets in "A Prayer for My Daughter", although this time as an image of innocent "merriment"(41-56).

Yeats also uses birds as rather more complex symbols of chaos, particularly uncontrolled violence. In "The Second Coming", the falcon, a traditional hunting or war bird, flies out of the range of its master, in ever-widening circles, and thus becomes uncontrolled and uncontrollable (1-3). It becomes like the "desert birds" flying in circles waiting for the death their presence foretells, which have never been controlled (17).

In "The Wild Swans at Coole" the swan, in its unchanging grace, beauty and capacity for violence, represents for Yeats the essence of the Irish spirit. The swans, swimming on water that "mirrors a still sky" (4), appear to exist in two worlds simultaneously, to share two complimentary essences. The swans are both "beautiful" (26) and violent, "wheeling in great broken rings" (11) reminiscent of the circular motions of the falcon and carrion eaters in "TheSecond Coming." Furthermore, while they remain unchanged by love, age, wandering, "passion or conquest" (19-24), they also "drift" (25) towards an uncertain ultimate destination.

Yeats furthers the identification of the Irish people with the swans in "Leda and the Swan", inwhich he retells the myth of Leda's rape by Zeus in the form of a swan. The violence of thesexual act which joins the immortal blood of the true Irish spirit with the beauty of Ledaprecedes the violence which the dual nature of the offspring of such a union will of necessityengender.

Maud Gonne, a perennial source of frustration and disappointment in Yeat's life, exemplifiedfor Yeats this tragic blend of violent beauty. Gonne, as one of the "daughters of the swan" (20)of the autobiographical "Among School Children", began her life as a child, but experienced"tragedy" even in her youth (12). Even the poet himself developed from a bird-although hisplumage was not to be compared with Gonne's (29,30). Yeats has undergone such externaltransformation, however, as to scare away the birds from whom he is descended (32, 48).

Despite this transformation, Yeats retains his inward self, and something of his youth,through his poetry. He still hears and enjoys the singing of the "birds in the trees" (2) of the title city in "Sailing to Byzantium". If it were not for his delight in that "sensual music"(7), however, Yeats might become a mere scarecrow, a "tattered coat upon a stick" (10). Instead, he desires re-embodiment in the form of an artificial bird (25-32), which suits the true, internal Years better than his present "dying animal" (22) body.

In short, Yeats wants to be a part of the miraculous setting of "Byzantium", in which those same golden birds sing of both the changeless and the ever-changing (17-24). For Yeats, for whom the circle and spiral were essential elements in viewing history and the world, this result would return him to the same point in the spiral of his life, only at a higher level--descended from a bird, he would return to a bird, but as a higher form of bird, "more miracle than bird" (18). These timeless, golden birds represent poetry and its voice, beauty, wisdom, and artifice. Ultimately, Yeats wished to achieve immortality through his song--a feat which he appears to have accomplished.