Jul 23, 2007

Rough Draft, Lost, Not Forgotten

By now, everyone has heard about the latest Robert Frost poem found at the University of Virginia. "War Thoughts at Home" was published in Virginia Quarterly Review's Fall 2006 Issue. Upon hearing the news about the once unknown poem, I rushed to the bookstore to pick up the issue. I've had the volume for almost a year now, though it has been in and out of my possession on occasion. I've read the poem many times, like I've read many of Robert Frost's poems in the past.

Unlike many of his poems, it would seem this one is not finished. It is not as polished as some of his other works. But beyond that, the voice of the poem is not sure and steady. "So someone heeds from within/This flurry of bird war,/" Who is within watching? The next lines indicate it is a woman, but she seems ambivalent about watching given the sewing in her lap. It is the birds in the fifth stanza who are adamant their fight is not over like the war in France. The poem is dated January 1918, which suggests it was written during World War I, though the war ended that same year.

The thoughts of the birds now migrate to the woman who drifts into thoughts of camps where soldiers are groomed. My favorite and most haunting lines come at the end of the poem. "Shed behind shed in train/Like cars that long have lain/dead on a side track.//" Not only do these lines resemble the Frost I know and love, but also they signify a greater understanding about war and that it is never truly over. In fact, the lines of sheds mirroring train cars could allude to the later transportation of Jews to concentration camps during World War II. However, the poem was left as is in a book, so whether Frost had an epiphany or vision of the future will never be known.

****Here's a little article from VQR that could shed light on this poem and topic for my readers.

7 comments:

Anna said...

I'd like to read that poem sometime. Maybe he was a prophet and no one ever knew. LOL

Does it say the poem was unfinished, or is that just speculation based on the reading of his later works? Maybe it's just not as polished because it's an earlier work but he considered it finished??

I guess we'll never know.

Serena said...

Well they allegedly found it tucked in some book at the university library. It was like he forgot it in there and returned the book and didn't think on it again. I just wonder if he wrote it on a whim and tucked it in the book for revision later on. It's not a bad poem by any means. It is just different from his published works.

Anna said...

How do they know it was written by him if it was just tucked inside a book?

Those absentminded poets!

Serena said...

Writing analysis etc. I have no idea.

Anna said...

Interesting...

I am intrigued...

Serena said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Serena said...

According to VQR, Frost inscribed a new poem, “War Thoughts at Home,” in a copy of North of Boston, his second book. The interesting part of the comments about the poem are as follows:

"'War Thoughts at Home' embodies the stories of two great friends in Frost’s life. The first was Edward Thomas—who died in the trenches during World War I—and the poem narrates Frost’s ambivalence about the war that claimed Thomas’s life. The story of the other friend picks up where the first leaves off. It is the story of a new beginning for Frost in his friendship with Frederic G. Melcher, a rising star in the book trade, and it was Melcher who preserved this lost passage of Frost’s poetic thoughts about the war. By placing the stories of these two friends side by side, we may begin to put this lost poem in context."