A birthday party was given for Robert Frost when he turned eighty five years old. His publishers, Henry Holt and Company hosted a party on March 26, 1959. The guest speaker at the event was the essayist Louis Trilling. During the speech Trilling referred to Frost as “a terrifying poet.” This comment caused a controversy. In the April issue of The New York Times Book Review the columnist J. Donald Adams criticized Tilling for using that description of Robert Frost. Several people had their angry letters published.
Does Trilling make a good point that Frost’s poems are terrifying? The poems will be discussed to try to understand what Trilling meant. In general Frost writes a lot about nature. There are many lovely plants and animals in nature but there are also things that happen that are frightening. It is possible that Frost wrote about frightening parts of nature, too.
Trilling and “terrifying”
The Webster’s Dictionary defines terrifying as the past participle of terrify which means “to fill with terror.” The first three definitions for terror are (a) a great fear, (b) a person or thing that causes great fear, or (c) a person who is a dreadful nuisance. So what did Trilling mean when in a speech honoring Frost he called Frost terrifying?
In an essay titled “A Speech on Robert Frost: A Cultural Episode.” written in 1959, Trilling tries to explain what he meant in his speech. Interestingly Trilling makes a confession that he had been “alienated” for some time from Robert Frost’s work but then “at the behest of better understanding” his feeling turned to one of “admiration” (Trilling, 1971, 377).
Although Trilling was accused of not being appreciating Frost, he did appreciate Frost but not in the way everyone else did. In the essay Trilling describes Frost as a great American writer. The reason Trilling appreciates Frost’s work is because he is leaving behind old European ways of writing and describing new experiences. During the lecture Trilling quoted D. H. Lawrence in reference to artist’s being “damned liar(s)” (Trilling, 1971, 377). Trilling clearly states that he did not mean the Robert Frost was a liar but that it is only a couple of his poems that his intention is very clear. Frost’s intention is to move away from the old consciousness and introduce a new consciousness. In other words Trilling explains that Frost is a radical poet and his poems are about a reality that is not always cozy and warm.
Design
One of the poems he mentions as clearly demonstrating Frost’s intention is “Design.”
The poem describes a fat, white spider “holding up a moth” (lines 1 & 2). A white and dimpled spider could be a fairy tale kind of spider for children but already in the second line the spider has killed a moth. The reader can see the dead moth. The color white of the spider is misleading and the color white is important throughout the whole poem. White is not the color of murder or death. Black is the dark color of those distressing events. White is the color of innocence and pure things. Bridal gowns are white for example.
White is mentioned in the poem five times. Snow which can be another way of saying white is mentioned one time. This seems ironic because the poem is not about innocence but asks why a lovely flower is the place where such a tragic event has taken place. The three lines in the last verse compare the flower to the deed of the spider. “What had that flower to do with being white,” (line 9), “Then (the spider) steered the white moth thither in the night?” (line 12), and “What but design of darkness to appall?” (line 13).
This poem is sneakily terrifying. The spider is holding up its victim maybe ‘to show it off.’ At first the dead moth looks “Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth –“to the poet’s eye. On closer look it is not anything so bland and unemotional but surprisingly it is a dead moth. That must have taken the poet back for a moment when he realized what the spider was doing, especially if he was expecting something sweet. Nature is full of both sweet flowers to smell and pretty birds but nature cannot survive without the predators that prey on their victims. There is a tragic element to nature that cannot be ignored in this poem.
The poem ‘Design’ needs to be read several times to understand what the poet means. The poem at first glance seems to be about good (white) things but when the poem is carefully read it turns out to be about something bad or evil. The spider has used the blue ‘heal-all’ flower to lure the moth into a trap. The flower not only looks pretty but the name ‘heal-all’ sounds like the petals have some medicinal power to heal. The moth though has no such luck. The moth becomes spider food. In Trilling’s essay he invites people to “Read the poem called ‘Design’ and see if you sleep the better for it” (378).
Neither Out Far nor In Deep
The poem “Neither out far nor in the deep” takes reading several times but then the meaning seems so obvious. It is like a riddle ‘What is neither out far not in deep?’ The answer is something shallow. Something shallow can be an object that is not very deep. A person’s mind can be shallow, too. People who are superficial are only interested in things that look good. They do not bother to find out what the face of a person or thing is covering up. People like that are also very concerned about what other people think. Make decisions in life based on what other people think is a very shallow way to go through life.
In the poem the people are staring out into the sea looking maybe for answers. They are not like the sea gull reflected in “The wetter ground like glass” because sea gulls naturally spend all their time looking out to sea. Sea gull’s get their food from the sea. Trilling wrote that we should “Read ‘Neither Out Far nor In Deep’ which often seems to me the most perfect poem of our time, and see if you are warmed by anything in it except the energy with which emptiness is perceived” (378). That seems to match the emptiness of the people with their backs to the land and their lives who gaze endlessly at the sea.
Montiero (2000) explained that Trilling thought that “Neither Out Far nor in Deep” was a “poetic touchstone(s) for the modern world and its great problems.” Here is what Monteiro repeats from Trilling
. . . Suffice it to say that Trilling, describing its “actual subject” as being “the response of mankind to the empty immensity of the universe,” argues that “the poem does not affirm that what is watched for will appear. It says no more than it is the nature of ‘the people’ to keep watch, whether or not there is anything to appear. (Montierno, 2000, 154)
In line 10 the reader learns that they are looking for “truth.” The last verse is
13 They cannot look out far.
14 They cannot look in deep.
15 But when was that ever a bar
16 To any watch they keep?
Especially in the last verse but also though the whole poem the people are taken as being very smart because they are looking outward. They could turn around and look at the land that is so full of variety (line 9The land may vary more) If they were spending their time meditating they would be looking inward and probably learn more.
Conclusion
The most famous poems of Robert Frost are poems like “The Road not Taken” or “Stopping Woods on a Winter Evening.” Those poems are sort of sad or melancholy. If those are the only poems that a person reads by Robert Frost they would never consider him ‘a terrifying poet.’ The poems ‘Design’ and ‘Neither Out Far nor In Deep’ are not talked about nearly as much. The poem ‘Neither Out Far nor In Deep’ was printed in a book from 1946 of Robert Frost’s poems that was found on the Internet Archives. The modern anthologies that were checked on Amazon.com did not include the poem.
Learning about Louis Trilling and his essays about Robert Frost was the most help in understanding what he meant by “a terrifying poet.” Reading the two poems that Trilling suggested does help to understand the “terrifying” point of view about Frost’s poems. The poet understood the complexities of nature and human nature, both the good and the bad.
Design
1 I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
2 On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
3 Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
4 Assorted characters of death and blight
5 Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
6 Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
7 A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
8 And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
9 What had that flower to do with being white,
10 The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
11 What brought the kindred spider to that height,
12 Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
13 What but design of darkness to appall?--
14 If design govern in a thing so small.
Neither Out Far nor In Deep
1 The people along the sand
2 All turn and look one way.
3 They turn their back on the land.
4 They look at the sea all day.
5 As long as it takes to pass
6 A ship keeps raising its hull;
7 The wetter ground like glass
8 Reflects a standing gull
9 The land may vary more;
10 But wherever the truth may be--
11 The water comes ashore,
12 And the people look at the sea.
13 They cannot look out far.
14 They cannot look in deep.
15 But when was that ever a bar
16 To any watch they keep?
Works Cited
Frost, R. Neither out far nor in deep. The Poems of Robert Frost. New York, NY: Random House, Inc. 1946. p. 347.
Frost, R. Design. Robert Frost’s Poems. New York, NY: Henry Holt & Company. 1971. p. 208.
Robert Frost: Webster’s Timeline History 1763-2007. Philip M. Parker (Ed.). San Diego, CA: ICON Group International, Inc. 2009. pp. 153-178.
Trilling, L. A speech on Robert Frost: A cultural episode. (1959) The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent: Selected Essays. Leon Wieseltier (Ed.) New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000. pp. 372-380.
Monteiro, G. Robert Frost’s Liberal Imagination. Roads Not Taken: Rereading Robert Frost. Columbia, E. J. Wilcox & J. N. Barron (Eds.) MO: University of Missouri Press. 2000.
