North of Boston by Robert Frost

Source of book: I own the complete Robert Frost - a gift from a very special woman.

As part of my systematic reading of my poetry collection, I am reading through my favorite poet, Robert Frost, in chronological order. I previously reviewed A Boy’s Will. This is his second collection, North of Boston.

The two make for an interesting contrast. A Boy’s Will consists entirely of short poems, most with a stanza form and regular rhyme. North of Boston, with one exception, is entirely narrative poems in blank verse.

(Frost was particularly touchy about the confusion between free verse and blank verse. Free verse lacks both meter and rhyme. Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter - the choice of Milton and Shakespeare and many others.)

North of Boston focuses on human interaction, particularly conversations. The poems tell stories, with twists and turns often reserved for the end. Despite the formal constraints of the poetry, the characters come alive through their words. Even laconic dialogue reveals the characters of Frost’s beloved New England.

I was struck again by the similarities with the short stories and sketches of Sarah Orne Jewett, who also lived in and wrote about the rural New England countryside and small towns. Both writers capture the essence of the cold winters, and hard scrabble existence, the lines of care etched on the faces as they draw out the deeply human and sympathetic qualities of their characters.

Here are a few that I particularly liked.

“The Mending Wall”

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun,

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it

Where there are cows?

But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me~

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

I spent a portion of my teen years building rock retaining walls, both for and with my family, and also to earn some money from neighbors. Even a well built wall tends to need regular repairs, so this was completely familiar. I also understand his neighbor’s point of view. If this is taken beyond the literal sense - and I believe Frost intends it that way - it speaks to the importance of boundaries, even between good friends who have nothing to fear from each other. That certain degree of separation creates a level of comfort. Perhaps this is particularly so for those of us who are introverts.

I was also reminded again of how good “The Death of the Hired Man” is. Within the space of six scant pages - 175 lines - Frost creates three memorable characters: Warren and Mary, the married couple whose dialogue forms most of the poem; and Silas, the old hired man, who comes “home” to die.

   

"Home," he mocked gently.  
 
"Yes, what else but home?  
It all depends on what you mean by home.  
Of course he’s nothing to us, any more  
Than was the hound that came a stranger to us             
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail."  
 
"Home is the place where, when you have to go there,  
They have to take you in."  
 
"I should have called it  
Something you somehow haven’t to deserve."   

I loved this when I first read it in High School, and still love it now, when I have more reason to understand its truth. I also loved the description of Silas’ ordinariness - his utter lack of distinction.

“Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk,  
And nothing to look backward to with pride,  
And nothing to look forward to with hope,  
So now and never any different."    

Another poem I particularly loved from this collection was “The Mountain,” which recalled Jewett’s marvelous sketch, “An October Ride.” The wilderness, and mountains in particular, have a special place in my heart, and Frost’s description of the trail up the mountain as described by a local man reveals Frost to share the same sense of adventure. I love the opening lines:

The mountain held the town as in a shadow

I saw so much before I slept there once:

I noticed that I missed stars in the west,

Where its black body cut into the sky.

Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall

Behind which I was sheltered from a wind.

The rest is too long to quote, but is well worth reading. I would also recommend “Home Burial” for its lacerating portrayal of the different styles of mourning displayed by a husband and wife after the early death of their child.

Great lines abound in these poems, ones that stick with the reader. From “The Code,” for example:

The hand that knows his business won’t be told

To do work better or faster - those two things.

Apparently, this truth has been lost on lousy managers everywhere.

Or this one from “The Housekeeper,” which tells of an illicit relationship gone bad.

I tell them they can’t get me through the door, though:

I’ve been built here like a big church organ.

I’ll end with a shorter poem, though still in blank verse, which blends the narrative form with the compact incident and thought of Frost’s previous collection.

“The Wood-Pile”

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,

I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here.

No, I will go on farther—and we shall see.'

The hard snow held me, save where now and then

One foot went through. The view was all in lines

Straight up and down of tall slim trees

Too much alike to mark or name a place by

So as to say for certain I was here

Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.

A small bird flew before me. He was careful

To put a tree between us when he lighted,

And say no word to tell me who he was

Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.

He thought that I was after him for a feather—

The white one in his tail; like one who takes

Everything said as personal to himself.

One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.

And then there was a pile of wood for which

I forgot him and let his little fear

Carry him off the way I might have gone,

Without so much as wishing him good-night.

He went behind it to make his last stand.

It was a cord of maple, cut and split

And piled—and measured, four by four by eight.

And not another like it could I see.

No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.

And it was older sure than this year's cutting,

Or even last year's or the year's before.

The wood was gray and the bark warping off it

And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis

Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.

What held it though on one side was a tree

Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,

These latter about to fall. I thought that only

Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks

Could so forget his handiwork on which

He spent himself, the labor of his ax,

And leave it there far from a useful fireplace

To warm the frozen swamp as best it could

With the slow smokeless burning of decay.

Whether it is the self-absorption of the bird, the twisting clematis vine, or the hard work of splitting a whole cord of wood, Frost’s language brings a picture to life. I was reminded again of the way that the best writing is often the most transparent. Frost’s language feels so simple and natural - deceptively so. However, a close reading reveals just how much thought is packed into each line, each word. The seeming clarity of his verse conceals a delicious ambiguity and complexity waiting for the reader to discover. Frost may have been an early infatuation once, but I find I never tire of reading even as I age.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by "Tennessee" Williams

Source of Book: Borrowed from the library. This is one of the random books my wife selected for me.

In many ways, this play, written in the 1950s, is a perfect selection for an attorney who deals with the aftermath of death and inheritance on a regular basis. I get to see the fighting and hidden rivalries and hurts come to the surface when things go bad. Naturally, sibling resentment and greed are common factors in family disputes - as is the occasional dark secret.

As a quick summary: Big Daddy, a rich Southern planter, is dying of cancer, but the doctors and his children have kept this news from him and his wife, Big Mama. The older son, Gooper, is a respectable lawyer. He and his wife Mae have five-and-a-half children, and a great deal of resentment toward his parents and younger brother, Brick. In contrast, Brick is irresponsible and an alcoholic. He refuses to have sex with his wife Maggie - an open secret that is alluded to throughout the play. Maggie is frustrated, but is trying to hold Brick together.

The title of the play refers to the way that Maggie views herself. She is the uneasy cat on the hot tin roof, trying to find a way to safety. Also, Big Daddy refers to Maggie and Mae as cats on the proverbial roof, eyeing each other, trying to find an advantage.

Everyone in the family is keeping a poisonous secret from the others, and these secrets come out during the course of the play. Big Daddy hates Big Mama, and wants to have an affair with someone, anyone. Gooper has never gotten along with his parents, and resents that they do not appreciate him. Mae greedily yearns for the inheritance, and despises Maggie. Big Mama shows overt favoritism for Brick, referring to him as her “only son.” Maggie wants a child, and is frustrated that Brick doesn’t love her.

The big secret, though, is held by Brick, who drinks to keep the secret from himself. Brick is homosexual, and had feelings for his football teammate, Skipper. Maggie had suspicions about the relationship, and ended up in bed with Skipper, who was probably trying to prove he wasn’t gay. Skipper realizes that he cannot complete the act, so he calls Brick and confesses his love. Brick rejects him, and Skipper commits suicide. (This all occurs before the action in the play itself, which observes the classical “unities.”) After this, Brick escalates his drinking, and lets his life spiral out of control.

I don’t intend to spoil the ending. Or rather, endings. In the version I have, there are two endings, somewhat the same, but with significant differences. The first is the original, as Williams wrote it. The second is the ending as performed on Broadway, after director Elia Kazan, (who would collaborate with Williams on other plays, including A Streetcar Named Desire) requested some changes throughout the third act. I am torn as to which ending I like best. On the one hand, the Broadway ending appears that it would work better on stage, and suggests some changes in the characters as a result of the laceration that occurs in act two. On the other, I think that the original has a certain raw power about it. It also contains a great line that I wish had remained in the revised ending. I’m glad I read both.

The author’s introduction to the play is excellent, although far too long to quote here. In essence, he eloquently describes the tangled relationship between art and the personality of the artist that created it. Williams quotes from another of his plays, Orpheus Descending, “We're all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!”

This idea makes particular sense in light of the relationship of this play to Williams’ own life.

Born Thomas Lanier Williams III in 1911, Williams later took up the name of “Tennessee,” perhaps as a nod to his ancestors from that state, or as a reference to his accent. He had an alcoholic father, and a strong relationship with his sister, who later suffered from schizophrenia. Williams himself struggled with alcoholism, and greatly feared that he too would sucumb to mental illness.

Also important for this play was his troubled relationship - or lack thereof - with his own father. Perhaps Williams identified with Gooper in this regard, while he clearly patterned certain of Brick’s traits after himself. Williams also was homosexual, although he made some attempts at heterosexual relationships.

Some thoughts on the play: the big theme is that of falsity, or, as Brick puts it, “mendacity.” This is a delicious old word that has a flavor of its own. Webster’s dictionary defines being mendacious as “given to or characterized by deception or falsehood or divergence from absolute truth.” This is the kind of falsehood characterized not by what is said, but by what is implied. It is the false impression intentionally left, even though the words are not, technically, untrue. I think this word is useful in describing much of the reporting and writing on politics. What is unsaid is more important than what is actually said. Williams skillfully weaves mendacity throughout the narrative, as the characters attempt to verbally assassinate each other through implication.

A great example of this is Big Mama’s exchange with Maggie early in the play, before the secrets are revealed.

    BIG MAMA: Don’t laugh about it! - Some single men stop drinkin’ when they git married and others start! Brick never touched liquor before he - !

    MAGGIE [crying out]: THAT’S NOT FAIR!

    BIG MAMA: Fair or not fair I want to ask you a question, one question: D’you make Brick happy in bed?

    MAGGIE: Why don’t you ask if he makes me happy in bed?

    BIG MAMA: Because I know that -

    MAGGIE: It works both ways!

    BIG MAMA: Something’s not right! You’re childless and my son drinks!

Also notable is the casual cruelty of the doctor and the reverend, who both slink out as soon as they can to avoid the uncomfortable emotions. No comfort is offered, and neither is willing to involve himself.

Mae, in particular, is intentionally mean, lashing out in the cruelest way possible at Brick, and especially Maggie. Gooper thinks all the nasty things that Mae says, but he usually knows that they are best left implied rather than said.

However, in a great line that was left out of the Broadway version, Gooper makes an awkward, insensitive joke at the absolute wrong time. Big Mama has just been informed of Big Daddy’s terminal condition by the doctor, who urges her to “keep your chin up.”

Gooper jests, “She’s gonna keep both chins up, aren’t you Big Mama?” It really is too bad this line got cut.

One final line surprised me. Growing up, my dad occasionally used the phrase, “Yes siree, Bob!” I had no idea that this line was in this play. A quick search indicates that it probably originated in the mid-1800s in the South, so Williams presumably drew it from his own experience. Who knew?

Like many an unpleasant play, this one is not a fun or light read. However, it elucidates truth about human nature and relationships. Despite the different time and place it represents, it could have been drawn from any number of angry family feuds that I have been involved in professionally. The hurt and anger, the lack of respect for the “good” child, the character assassination, the hypocrisy, and above all, the mendacity are true to life.

Paul Newman as Brick and Elizabeth Taylor as Maggie in the screen version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The movie version downplayed the homosexual elements, and eliminated much of the stronger language in the original.

Selected Short Stories and Sketches by Sarah Orne Jewett

Source of Book: Borrowed from the Library, but I want to add it to my collection.
Date originally posted on Facebook: December 16, 2010

This particular book (borrowed from the library) also contains Jewett’s 3 novels and a set of short stories related to one of the novels. This review covers the 24 stories and sketches not related to the novels or each other.

Jewett, the daughter of a country doctor, lived from 1859 to 1909. She received enough from her family to be essentially independently wealthy, although she also received income from her writing. She lived an enviable life, in many ways; she knew and socialized with many of the literary and other cultural figures of her era. However, she was never particularly healthy, never married, and became a bit of an invalid for her last decade.

Jewett was from, and lived in, New England. Her writing focuses on that region and its colorful inhabitants. One of my initial impressions was that she shared with Robert Frost the fascination with nature. Indeed, her prose and his poetry have much the same “feel”, despite the obvious differences in form. Since Frost came later, perhaps her writing was an influence on him; perhaps there is something in the very soil of rural New England that lends its flavor to those who settle there. Another author with some similarity, oddly enough, is L. M. Montgomery, for a different reason: Jewett, in addition to her observant writing of nature, had an excellent eye for people as well. Many of these stories concern older women, and their personalities and relationships are brought to life with both humor and pathos, but with great fondness.

Several in this collection are rightly called sketches, as they are autobiographical in nature. In addition to the times she accompanied her father on his rounds, Jewett loved to walk or ride throughout the countryside by herself. She recreates both of these activities in her sketches. As an avid hiker myself, I was drawn in – perhaps I need to visit the Northeast someday with my favorite hiking stick.

The stories themselves are told about the ordinary inhabitants of small towns and villages. The characters are (relatively) rich or poor, young and old, judgmental and kind, but none boring. I was particularly struck by the sense of community. Even the most cold-hearted character felt some responsibility for others, and every character felt connected somehow to her neighbors – even the ones that were disliked on a personal level. Alas, it seems that to a city dweller like me, this community is hard to find just anywhere. We still experience it in some cases at work, church, and within the circle of those who share our interests; we rarely know more than a couple of the neighbors on our street.

I already mentioned that Jewett has sympathy for her characters. She also brings a sense of hope to them all. Circumstances do not determine happiness. No one is entirely beyond repair, although many suffer in one way or another. Poverty was a daily fact of life for those who outlived their ability to perform manual labor. Poverty then meant boarding with others or in the poorhouse, planning the cost of each and every meal, making clothes last for years, and no chance of getting from place to place without walking. In our current “poverty” of cable TV, cases of soda purchased with food stamps, and vehicles for nearly everyone, we forget what true poverty was, and indeed is in most of the world. Jewett paints these pictures memorably. The brightness in the gloom, however, are the people. The lady who takes the time to gently encourage and instruct her cousin’s young housemaid. The spinster who brightened the lives of all those around her. The father who took his young daughters on a special day trip into town. These people are real, unembellished, and completely believable. Jewett had a real eye and ear for both nature and human nature, and combined these with excellent writing.

A few of the stories particularly stood out: The White Heron (which I read in high school), about a young girl, an ornithologist, and the bird; Marsh Rosemary, a devastating story of loneliness; Miss Tempy’s Watchers, contrasting the late Miss Tempy and the two friends that “stand watch” after her passing; A Native of Winby, about a successful soldier and politician who makes a return to his home village; and An October Ride, the best (in my opinion) of the sketches.

Willa Cather (among others), spoke highly of Jewett’s writing, ranking her with Twain and Hawthorne. While her writing was neither as prolific nor as earthshaking as these two, I would agree that it has the same depth, but on a smaller, more intimate scale. This is humanity as humanity, not as metaphor. This is humor that makes for a knowing smile, not a broad guffaw. These are tales of small, once familiar places; not exotic lands. This miniaturism is a strength of these stories, serving to highlight human nature without the distraction. Jewett’s writing is a reminder that the everyday and the familiar can, in the right hands, be as fascinating as the wildest fiction.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

I read this book as part of my adopted hometown’s “One Book, One Bakersfield” event. Every year, there is a more or less official citywide reading of a particular book, followed by events related to that book.

I rarely participate, because most of the books chosen haven’t interested me. The last one was To Kill A Mockingbird, which included a viewing of the movie sponsored by our county bar association, with discussion of due process issues and the importance of criminal defense.

This year’s selection seemed interesting, so I went ahead and read it. My wife attended a series of one-man (or woman) dramas written by local literary sorts, including a good friend of ours. Later, Sandra Cisneros herself will be giving a lecture at the local university, which I may have a chance to attend. It is rather fun to have a single book to discuss with my local book loving friends.

The House on Mango Street isn’t a novel. It isn’t really a collection of short stories. Rather, I would characterize it as a series of vignettes drawn from the author’s childhood memories of growing up in poverty. They are not strictly autobiographical, as the author makes clear, but they are drawn from real people she knew - as are the characters in just about any book worth reading.

Cisneros grew up in both Chicago and Mexico, more or less at the same time. Her father kept moving back and forth, giving Cisneros little time to put down roots. In addition, she was the only daughter, with six brothers who tended to pair up in twos, leaving her to herself. Even her father referred to his children as “six sons and one daughter” rather than “seven children,” a fact that bother her greatly. Fortunately, her mother, at least, seemed to want better things for her, and worked to enable her to complete school and attend college.

I recognized a good bit of incident in the stories from my own experiences growing up in a predominantly hispanic neighborhood in Los Angeles. It wasn’t quite the hopeless poverty of the ghetto, but there were plenty of families that we knew that were always on the move from one rental house to another. The kids would often have no goals beyond finding a partner and having kids, or getting a basic job, perhaps. School was endured, not loved, and about half dropped out before graduating. 


One thing Cisneros brings out is the everyday nature of domestic violence. There is a definite misogyny present in recent immigrant communities (and perhaps in lower class communities in general) that accepted that a wife could be beaten, or confined to her home to keep her from being unfaithful. There are some achingly sad tales here, and they are true to life. We forget that much of the world still thinks of women as the property of men, inferior to them in intellect and judgment. Cisneros witnessed and experienced this, and never did end up marrying or having children.

Another fact of life in this book that was familiar was the many unsupervised hours that even young children spent. Throughout history, of course, both parents have had to work hard just to survive, and still do in poor communities or countries today. Even if the work wasn’t out of the house, it consumed time and energy, and the kids were and are expected to fend for themselves outside.
A final reflection on this book is the vignette entitled “Those who don’t.”

Those who don’t know any better come into our neighborhood scared. They think we’re dangerous. They think we will attack them with shiny knives. They are stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake.

But we aren’t afraid. We know the guy with the crooked eye is Davey the Baby’s brother, and the tall one next to him in the straw brim, that’s Rosa’s Eddie V., and the big one that looks like a dumb grown man, he’s Fat Boy, though he’s not fat anymore nor a boy.

All brown all around, we are safe. But watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake and our car windows get rolled up tight and our eyes look straight. Yeah. That is how it goes and goes.

 

This one is uncannily accurate. We knew everyone on our block, and my siblings and I moved about freely from a young age, playing baseball in the street, riding our bikes to the store and back, and so on. And, I must say, I got to eat fresh Chicharrónes cooked in a rusty drum over an open fire - and had many other formative foodie experiences. I think that growing up that way gave me a better ability than most who grew up in white middle-class neighborhoods, to sense whether a situation is truly threatening. I still regularly volunteer to assist low income clients with legal issues at community events, and still find that, with few exceptions, most people are not dangerous. Particularly to a white man, it must be said. There is no doubt that I am safer to wander into East LA by mistake - even at night - than a black man would be. A sad fact, but it is true.

Cisneros nails it here, though. We are all afraid of what we do not know and cannot read. We fear the other until we meet him. And her, and them, and their grandparents, and so forth. I strongly believe that all of us should get out of our own little circles of acquaintance from time to time. In addition, we can read books like this to understand others in a way we haven’t yet.

Anyway, this book was worth the read, and I think it would be even more so for those who have never experienced poverty or lived with those who have.

Update June 25, 2018: I returned to this book six years later, with my kids. We listened to the audiobook - read by the author - for one of our trips. My eldest kid ended up reading a few excerpts for 9th Grade English. He enjoyed what he read, and requested we listen to the rest of it. I think my older kids enjoyed it more than my littlest, but no complaints either.

It was kind of interesting to re-read it in a different era. This time through, our nation is in a paroxysm of resurgent White Nationalism and xenophobia, with Latino immigrants specifically targeted by a racist administration given to referring to immigrants as vicious snakes and the like. Books like this are a good antidote to that kind of thinking, putting a recognizable human face on people. It is a reminder that neither brown skin nor poverty makes one less human, and our commonalities are far more than we think. I certainly understood Esperanza as the sort of kid I knew...and was.