By ELAINE MAGLIARO
For my first post at Flowers for Socrates, I thought I’d share “Out, Out—”, a poem written by Robert Frost, and a video from the Favorite Poem Project. In the video, Frost’s poem is read by Elizabeth Wojtusik, a teaching artist. Wojtusik also explains why the poem has relevance to her life.
In Americans’ Favorite Poems, the first anthology compiled by the Favorite Poem Project, Wojtusik provides her reasons for choosing Frost’s poem as her favorite:
Even just look at the title of the poem and consider the content. This boy’s life is over. He is out—of—here. Why do I want to read this poem? Because I was transfixed by it from the start. The stage is set so well. I clearly see the boy, his sister, the busy mill. There is so uch action in the poem’s onset; then it is reduced to a weakening heartbeat and a few slow breaths. But it’s the end line that I so often repeat to myself when I am reminded of the frequent apathy of a world calloused to the misfortune of others. Life goes on…
‘Out, Out—’
By Robert Frost
The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws know what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand.
You can read the rest of the poem here.
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An excellent first contribution, Elaine, and (to my eye) one of Frost’s oddest poems. Effective and certainly a fine demonstration of his mastery of the form, but such unusual blend of emotional touch points. Nostalgia, fear, melancholy, sadness, perseverance, resignation. This poem always struck me as a Normal Rockwell painting gone horribly wrong.
I first met this poem while at university. Nam was in it’s initial stages but the build up was beginning to take friends and friends of friends. I had to write a paper on “Out, Out—” for an English Lit class and thus it is that the poem has always been with me.
Excellent posting Ms Elaine….
I generally stayed away from the classes of efforts….. Got shocked a few times with electives though…. Can we say linguistics…..
Elaine:
My uncle loved Robert Frost and I used to read some of his poems when I went to visit. One year I was splitting wood, lots of it, and read the Wood-Pile. I have remembered these lines since I was 18:
“It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled—and measured, four by four by eight.”
Very simple lines but much effort goes into setting up a cord of wood. Having split all those cords with ax, maul and sledge hammer gave that poem much more meaning than just reading it from the comfort of an easy chair by a warm fire on a winter night. The fire is much better when you split the wood yourself.
Thanks for the memory.